tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15761847035117402052024-02-20T20:27:14.257+11:00Famous First WordsA retrospective blog reflecting on ‘First Word’, a regular column published in AudioTechnology magazine from 1998 to 2006.Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-20276913461632608352010-02-28T15:07:00.017+11:002010-03-02T06:57:46.755+11:00FFW17: Engineer, promote thyself!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzQSWlbvBigooF4UH7Ed2urDZj9yRqBBQoIjeoTVwWtA0VRhplCNQK96pfj3e75Ka3r2bJ-LPXk7tsPXdUCRgiGO-jaDh5KlPiWeZZA-yaI-3obqnT-o3UEyldmDE9ml0Tq-qtDrlPHQ/s1600-h/issue17cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzQSWlbvBigooF4UH7Ed2urDZj9yRqBBQoIjeoTVwWtA0VRhplCNQK96pfj3e75Ka3r2bJ-LPXk7tsPXdUCRgiGO-jaDh5KlPiWeZZA-yaI-3obqnT-o3UEyldmDE9ml0Tq-qtDrlPHQ/s200/issue17cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5443142242792449442" /></a>“One of the best things about the democratisation of technology is that <span style="font-style:italic;">anyone</span> can afford to record. One of the worst things about the democratisation of technology is that <span style="font-style:italic;">anyone</span> can afford to record.” – Me, circa 2000.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">For this First Word I tackled the democratisation of technology and how it had affected the recording industry at that point in time (about seven years ago, I guess). As Stewart Brand, founding board member of The Long Now Foundation once said, “Technology moves through society like a steamroller; if you’re not part of the machine, you’re part of the road”. Hitching a ride on the democratised technology steamroller has led us to a place where musicians no longer need musicianship. Affordable recording software makes it so easy to overcome limitations in tuning, timing and expression that the contemporary recording musician needs nothing more than a good idea and the time to realise it. But when we see those same democratised-technology-dependent musicians attempting a live performance, we wonder if it might have been better to be part of the road.<br /><br />Fortunately, the skills required to be a good sound engineer have not yet been packaged into something that every musician can afford, and hopefully they never will be. It was with that thought in mind that I wrote this First Word…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Engineer, promote thyself!</span><br />One of the wonderful things about personal computers is the way they democratise technology, bringing the previously unattainable within reach of the masses. Consider recording technology. Years ago, releasing an album meant going into a professional studio with an experienced recording engineer. Studios were expensive to hire and therefore only available to artists signed to record companies. The average person could not afford to hire such a facility, let alone buy one.<br /><br />But these days all you need is a powerful personal computer, a multitrack recording package, a horde of plug-ins and some clever modelling algorithms. Such a set-up will give you the power and flexibility of a professional studio, sitting on your desktop, for only a few thousand dollars. Furthermore, with presets and wizard technologies, you don’t even need an experienced engineer – you can choose a preset that’s specifically designed to do the job (it says ‘Snare EQ’, doesn’t it?), or let wizard technology choose the perfect parameters for you. You can now afford to churn out the same crap-sounding recordings that thousands of other losers around the world are churning out. Welcome to democratised technology, it’s a wonderful thing.<br /><br />What is wrong with this picture? No matter how advanced our technology gets, it can never model or emulate the talent and skill of an experienced engineer. You can buy all the tools in the world, but if you don’t know how to use them you’re wasting your money. Billy Joel summed it up nicely when he sang, “Don’t waste your money on a new set of speakers, you’ll get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers”. But I digress…<br /><br />About three years ago a particularly talented recording engineer/studio owner phoned to tell me his tale of woe. The majority of his clients were up-and-coming bands, and he was usually their first recording engineer. He would teach them how to get the most out of the studio environment, and hold their hands through the process of their first couple of recordings. But in many cases, the bands would eventually decide they were ready to make ‘real’ records, and book themselves into major studios with major engineers. After investing much of his time and effort into these young bands, someone else would always reap the rewards. Perhaps you can relate to his dilemma.<br /><br />“What can I do to keep their recording projects in my studio?” he asked. I put on my best lateral-thinking Edward de Bono voice and said, “If you can’t keep their projects in your studio, try to keep your studio in their projects”. “Huh?” he replied, sounding totally confused. I explained that he shouldn’t be trying to keep the bands in his studio; rather, he should be suggesting the move to a major studio before the bands think of it themselves.<br /><br />“But how is that going to help me?” he asked, somewhat cynically. I actually didn’t have an answer for him at the time, but figured there was an opportunity in there somewhere. Being in a mystical Zen Master mood, I told him to sleep on it and call me tomorrow. Which he did. “I get it,” he said excitedly. “You meant that I should take them into a major studio and do the engineering myself. That way the band sees me as the hero and the guy who is pushing their career forward, not holding it back!” “Precisely…” I replied, a wave of smug relief sweeping over me.<br /><br />Following this, we discussed how he could capitalise on the situation even further by using a combination of his studio and a major studio. If the budget is low, do the bulk of the project in his studio, but mix the most promising songs and/or singles in a major studio for that ‘big budget’ sound. If the budget allows it, he could consider tracking drums and bass in a major studio, overdubbing everything else at his studio, and sharing the mixing between the two studios.<br /><br />There are all sorts of combinations to fit a given budget, but the main points are a) allocating a larger portion of the budget to the songs that are most likely to attract attention, and b) remaining with the band and playing an active role in furthering their career, rather than letting someone else take all the credit and rewards.<br /><br />It’s a good strategy for self-promotion. If you’re a studio owner/operator and you’re not prepared to think outside of your own little box, then that’s probably where you’re going to stay. There are large studios out there that will happily accept bookings from other studio owners. So make some appointments, get out and see some of these facilities, familiarise yourself with their equipment, and start furthering your career.<br /><br />There’s another conversation I’ve had with studio owner/operators a few times lately. It follows the theme that the business is dropping off, the advertising isn’t working, and things are looking bad. In each case, the main problem here is a failure to see how the market has changed due to the democratisation of recording technology.<br /><br />Studio advertisements containing lists of tracks, channels, effects and so on don’t impress anybody any more. What is valuable and impressive is your skill as an engineer. If you’re an experienced engineer and/or studio owner, forget about promoting your equipment. Concentrate on promoting your skills instead. Focus on your track record, and what you can offer to your clients that they can’t do for themselves. Your skill and experience as a recording engineer can never be put in a box or software package, and it’s the one thing that many project studio owners are realising they don’t have. It happens about three minutes after they realise that they’re churning out the same crap-sounding recordings that thousands of other losers around the world are churning out.<br /><br />There’s an opportunity in there somewhere. Sleep on it and call me tomorrow, okay?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Over the last decade or so, the democratisation of technology has made it increasingly difficult for large studios. Many have closed down, taking the industries that service and maintain them down too. But the studio industry isn’t the only victim of the democratisation of technology; in fact, it’s a rather pissy and insignificant industry in global terms, hardly worth thinking about. Although I have the largest recording studio in the known world, I’m worried about something far more important than the studio industry…<br /><br />The world is currently going through massive cultural change, mostly brought about by affordable technology and the media access it provides. Although much of this change is good, we’re moving forwards at such a great speed that by the time we realise something has been left behind it’s too late to do anything about it - it's become part of the road, and there's no reverse gear. The dashboard of the democratised technology steamroller needs a sign that says, “Warning: events in rear vision mirror are older than they appear.”<br /><br />With that in mind, I’d like to draw your attention to <a href="http://www.longnow.org/">The Long Now Foundation</a>, holders of the <a href="http://www.longnow.org/clock/">10,000 Year Clock</a>, among other things. Established in 1996 to “creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”, it’s a think-tank of intelligent and creative people working together to make sure that we don’t leave too much behind in our race forwards. Rather than write about the foundation here, I’ll encourage you to check out their website. Begin by reading Stewart Brand’s <a href="https://www.longnow.org/about/">essay</a>, then poke around the site. You might even consider <a href="https://www.longnow.org/membership/">signing up</a>…</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-7361958352512220082010-02-20T16:33:00.015+11:002010-03-11T14:09:43.469+11:00FFW16: The boiled frog returns, diminished…<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3y1Iv6Pc7XOX0W2XbKu70cZme-dCc5EV_UrBIanZ_aIQQ45M0kMh7e_tqdWGjFe1A8MJg8eL37mgAPlhsqNaGoJmX4qrbwUrtJARg1YgbBTO2vTyvZadmMq97E1Fz0B9FCIfovn5moT0/s1600-h/issue16cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3y1Iv6Pc7XOX0W2XbKu70cZme-dCc5EV_UrBIanZ_aIQQ45M0kMh7e_tqdWGjFe1A8MJg8eL37mgAPlhsqNaGoJmX4qrbwUrtJARg1YgbBTO2vTyvZadmMq97E1Fz0B9FCIfovn5moT0/s200/issue16cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440195490492920802" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">AudioTechnology issue 16 was one of the biggest sellers in the magazine’s history, no doubt due to the magnificent Lara Croft (aka Angelina Jolie) on the front cover. It was the fifth issue to feature an artist on the front cover rather than equipment, and any doubts we had about that idea were well and truly quashed when the sales figures came in. It was a rather ordinary and uninspiring issue otherwise, if I remember correctly, which just goes to show how much we judge books by their covers. Likewise with audio equipment, but more about that later. Firstly, here’s FFW #16 from a decade or so ago…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The boiled frog returns, diminished…</span><br />“I’m not trying to tell you what to write,” smirked Chris, slapping the page onto his desk in mock disgust, “but the title sucks.” Good old Chris, always a reliable sounding board. “It belongs in a cryptic crossword or a French cookbook, not AudioTechnology!” he scoffed. “But it’s a sequel”, I explained. “Sequel to what? Your other Boiled Frog story? You haven’t finished writing that one yet. You can’t release a sequel before finishing the first part!” he yelled. “Why not?” I protested, trotting off down the corridor, “George Lucas did…”<br /><br />Twelve months ago I noticed faint brown rings forming on the circumference of my ATCs’ tweeters, where the dome meets the voice coil. They were very subtle at first, but gradually became more prominent. I hadn’t noticed any obvious change in sound quality, and figured it was a harmless discolouration in the dome’s fabric. But recently, during an AudioTechnology Spontaneous Human Consumption event, Rick Dowel of Control Devices and AudioTechnology’s Scott Christie dropped in for a listen, and both expressed their concern over the sound. Rick has never been a fan of the ATCs, and was the importer of a competing brand of studio monitors, so I took his criticisms with a grain of salt. But then Scott chimed in, commenting on how they weren’t sounding right to him, either. I trust Scott’s hearing implicitly, so his comments added validity to what Rick was saying. The whole evening was quite unnerving, and resulted in an argument between Rick and I regarding whether the problem was the monitors or the acoustic treatment of the room. I was banking on the room acoustics, because I could see no reason why the monitors would not be performing to specification. [Note to self: beat up Rick Dowel for criticising my monitors.]<br /><br />Could there really be something wrong with my monitors? After listening critically for a couple of hours (something I had not done for a long time), I raised some doubts of my own. The stereo imaging wasn’t as good as it used to be, and there was a general lack of low level resolution. Some of the ATCs’ magic was definitely missing.<br /> <br />A week later I had the good fortune of lunching with ATC’s founder, Bill Woodman. I mentioned the brown rings and received one of his typical matter-of-fact responses: “Osmosis”. Osmosis, Bill? “Osmosis. The ferrofluid has leached out of the magnetic gap and into the fabric of the dome tweeter. It looks like rust stains, which in fact it is. It very rarely happens, and we don’t know what causes it. But it’s happened to both of your tweeters simultaneously, which suggests it might be environmental…” I explained to Bill that my ATCs had spent a long time in AudioTechnology’s office above the shores of Dee Why beach, where the ocean breeze blows in a constant stream of salt air. Perhaps that would trigger it? “Whatever the cause, osmosis is your problem”, said Bill thoughtfully. “Osmosis. You ought to replace those tweeters immediately. You won’t be hearing the true performance of your monitors until you do. Oh, and if you’re going to write about this, Greg, please mention that we don’t manufacture those tweeters ourselves!”<br /><br />I followed Bill’s advice and the ATC magic came back. I couldn’t believe the improvement. I also couldn’t believe that such a dramatic loss of quality had eluded me for so long – an imperceptible degradation, slipping beneath my radar each and every day, and building into one big loss of quality. It needed someone with fresh ears to point out that my monitors were not sounding right. [Note to self: apologise to Rick Dowel.]<br /><br />Scientists call it the Boiled Frog Syndrome. If you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, it will try to get out. However, if you drop that frog into a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will stay there until it is boiled alive. The frog’s nervous system cannot sense very slow changes in temperature, and so it feels no need to panic. The same logic applies to human perception: if you change something slowly enough, people won’t notice the difference.<br /><br />After getting my ATCs back to spec, I noticed how poor the rest of my system had become. Little changes that didn’t seem to make any difference at the time (obviously due to the bad performance of my monitors) were now being revealed. I’ve upgraded to a balanced version of The Pot (see First Word, issue 10), replaced many of my cables, and I’m currently auditioning two excellent 24-bit 96k D/A converters: a Weiss DA1 and a Prism Sound DA2. Each of these changes offers a very subtle improvement, some are almost imperceptible on their own, but collectively, they add up – both sonically and financially. You have to spend a lot more money to get a little more improvement. The Law of Diminishing Returns conspires with the Boiled Frog Syndrome!<br /><br />My studio is sounding better than ever, for now. Are there any boiled frogs in your studio? Think about each piece of equipment you own. Is it working to spec? Is it in need of repairs or maintenance? Are you getting full performance? A bit of critical listening never hurt anybody…<br /><br />I’d like to end here, but there’s more. This is actually the sequel to a column titled ‘Boiled Frogs & The Golden Years of Hollywood’, which discusses how engineers and musicians still favour the sound of vintage audio equipment, despite the enormous advances made in circuit components and designs over the last 50 years. In our quest for less noise, wider bandwidth, lower distortion, and cheaper manufacturing, we’ve lost some of the special magic that made those old designs sound good. The loss has occurred very slowly over time, an imperceptible amount with each new generation of equipment. It’s the Boiled Frog Syndrome applied on a grand scale to audio equipment design.<br /><br />So, why haven’t I finished that column? Because it also discusses how the market has inverted to favour the manufacturers, and exposes a number of outright lies told to ignorant end-users by manufacturers whose best interests are served by maintaining the market’s ignorance. I’m proud of the effort, but our legal advisers are less than impressed. For now, at least, it must remain in AudioTechnology’s X files...<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Nothing shits me more about the project studio market than the crap that is sold to newcomers under the pretense that it is actually ‘professional’. Make it look good and it will sell like hotcakes regardless of what's inside – rather like issue 16 of AudioTechnology.<br /><br />Since the introduction of the project studio in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s the quality of equipment has been ever-so-slowly but ever-so-surely spinning down a vortex of marketing-driven degradation. It’s a see-saw with the designers and marketers on one end and the end-users on the other, constantly stuck up in the air and unable to get their feet on the ground to establish a proper point of reference.<br /><br />The majority of end-users have not spent years in pro studios using pro audio gear, and therefore have no point of reference for professional quality sound. The marketers have become acutely aware of this over the last few decades and, as a result, instruct the designers to make increasingly cheaper equipment because the end-user probably won’t notice the difference anyway. And so, with each generation of equipment to enter the market either a) the overall quality goes imperceptibly further downhill, or b) we pay imperceptibly less for the same overall quality. When will it stop? Probably never, because in this post-Ebay economy the dollar rules and nobody has the time to catch a boiled frog. Let’s go back to a better time…<br /><br />Many years ago sound engineers had thorough technical backgrounds and understood their equipment inside and out. We can forgive them for wearing white lab coats or suits and looking like nerds because they knew all about the electronics, the mechanics, and the transducers. They had a good understanding of the concepts of interfacing, loading, and so on. You could take any piece of gear and plug it into any other piece of gear, and it all worked with a minimum of fuss and bother. Products that met professional standards survived and thrived. If a product didn’t live up to professional standards, no-one bought it and it didn’t survive in the market place. Call it natural selection or call it intelligent evolution. Either way, the engineers told the manufacturers what they needed and wanted.<br /><br />But fast forward to these post-project studio revolution days and we find the situation is reversed. There are many ‘engineers’ out there who have only a surface level understanding of their equipment - what the knobs and buttons do – and in many cases that’s all they want to know. They rely on the manufacturers to make the products easy to use and easy to afford. Nowadays, the manufacturers tell the engineers what they need and want.<br /><br />The smarter manufacturers know that selling a product into this market is a simple matter of promoting some special new ‘pro’ feature and including an endorsement from a retired engineer with a list of hits from the distant past and the need for some fast cash. Easy as pie.<br /><br />I’m sure you’ve all witnessed the evolution: a musician buys an MBox or similar over-priced and under-performing piece of crap, along with a cylinder of electronic refuse from China that has been described as a microphone, in the belief that they’ll be able to make their next hit record with it. After a few months they realise they’re not getting the sound they were expecting. They pop into their local hi-tech shop and are told that they need a large diaphragm condenser microphone, so they buy the ‘bargain’ that the salesman recommends. But they’re still not getting the sound they’re expecting, and a few months later they’re told they need an external mic preamp. So they buy the one the salesman recommends, and the cycle repeats itself as they accumulate a tube compressor, better monitors, endless plug-ins and so on. They’ve spent a fortune and kept quite a few manufacturers and retailers in business, but they’re still not getting the result they want because a) they’re still buying project studio equipment, b) they still don’t understand what is going on beneath the surface, and c) they never invested any of that money into getting educated about the techniques and equipment choices of professional recording engineers. Manufacturers must love this technically ignorant and willingly hand-fed market.<br /><br />Since starting AudioTechnology in 1998 I’ve seen a lot of this crap going on. I’ve seen mixing consoles that are marketed as ‘professional’ because they’ve got phantom power, even though the maximum current supply is way less than the AES recommendation of 10mA per channel and so the sound falls apart when too many condenser mics are plugged into it. I’ve seen equipment labelled ‘professional’ because it can sometimes interface with balanced equipment, even though it’s really only pseudo-balanced and should at best be marketed as ‘balanced compatible’. I’ve seen 20-bit devices where one bit is permanently stuck high but the manufacturer does nothing about it because no-one in their proposed market can test it, let alone understand what it means (and the equipment reviewer who discovers it is encouraged to keep it quiet lest the magazine loses advertising revenue). The list goes on, but you get the idea… No wonder I got out of the audio magazine publishing game a few years later – I’d rather do something honest.<br /><br />There are, however, some positive outcomes:<br /><br />1) The inability to make professional quality recordings with project studio equipment encourages frustrated musicians and wannabe engineers to do audio courses. Audio education is big business, and teaching audio is one of my personal income generators.<br /><br />2) The plethora of poor recordings made with project studio equipment helps make my recordings sound superior. Making good recordings is another of my personal income generators.<br /><br />Come to think of it, both of those outcomes help me to reach the tops of the trees that I care to climb. So do me a favour: please ignore all that you’ve read here and keep using that wonderful stuff from Avid (Digidesign, MAudio), Mackie, Alesis, Behringer et al.</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-85592354183654949962009-06-13T12:47:00.007+10:002009-06-13T13:00:25.340+10:00FFW15: They’ll fix it in mastering…<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpABiosj2Xlpc-wQAA2EvL6QzVDu1Gh6p0geYjTNW9EmukHAmfwiKT_VWTRucgfc-Lm9Y2O8Y-0be8EQLeurCZdGgHn5uFV7EwCNiN1wKeoGNrztlwYbWoG8eTUC2IQ21tJO8e269xOk/s1600-h/issue15cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpABiosj2Xlpc-wQAA2EvL6QzVDu1Gh6p0geYjTNW9EmukHAmfwiKT_VWTRucgfc-Lm9Y2O8Y-0be8EQLeurCZdGgHn5uFV7EwCNiN1wKeoGNrztlwYbWoG8eTUC2IQ21tJO8e269xOk/s200/issue15cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346639073047735298" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">For this First Word I tackled the gradual decline in engineering quality that began in the mid ‘90s, and its associated reliance on mastering to make the end result sound acceptable. The gradual decline in engineering quality, which we are stuck with today and are unlikely to be rid of, was due to a number of events. Firstly, a misunderstanding of the grunge movement lead novices to believe that it was all about letting the recording equipment distort – no matter what the gear was. Sound recording suddenly seemed so easy that even a novice could do it; just let it distort and call it ‘grunge’! Let me assure you that skilfully overdriving high quality vintage audio gear produces a much different effect than blindly slamming a piece of crap you picked up brand new for $200 – the former sounds rich in appealing attitude, the latter sounds rich in pathetic try-hard masturbation. Someone’s ears are sleeping on the wet spot…<br /><br />Secondly, decreased recording budgets combined with the arrival of affordable recording toys (Digidesign’s MBox and similar shit) lead to the closure of many of the larger audio facilities that had been the benchmarks of engineering quality throughout the Western world. From that time on, calling yourself a ‘sound engineer’ no longer implied that you were a trained and seasoned expert. In fact, every wannabe with a soundcard and microphone was out there chasing recording work and getting it (unfortunately). If you talked the talk, novice musicians assumed that you also walked the walk. Sound engineers were replaced by sound entrepreneurs.<br /><br />Furthermore, the pathetic acceptance of outrageously heavy mix compression as a fashionable requirement for popular music meant that the sound quality within a mix was of little importance. All you needed to do was make sure that the loudest instruments </span>were<span style="font-style:italic;"> the loudest instruments, and let the mix compression take care of the rest, pushing the other sounds beneath the loudest ones and inadvertently hiding the inherent muddiness. It’s clarity through deceit, rather than clarity through skill. You can’t polish a turd, but if you can make it shiny enough someone will pay for the glossy exterior, oblivious of the shit within. And if there’s one thing that today’s mastering engineers excel at, it’s making shiny turds.<br /> <br />Here’s FFW15 from a decade or so ago, still relevant now.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">They’ll fix it in mastering…</span><br />When I started out in the recording industry, the word ‘digital’ was nothing more than a promising dream – a magic elixir for the ailments of analogue. There were no modular digital multitracks, no hard disk recorders, no DAT machines, and no CD burners. In fact, CD hadn’t even been invented, let alone burnt. So I learned to work within the limitations of analogue tape.<br /><br />Most of my early recording efforts were demos, destined for cassette. The process began by recording individual sounds through an analogue console onto analogue multitrack tape, mixing them down through an analogue console onto analogue two-track tape, editing with a razor blade and splicing tape to create a master, and dubbing that master onto analogue cassette.<br /><br />With all of this analogue processing and transferring came certain degradations; tape hiss and console noise would build up, and there was the inevitable loss of high frequencies due to transferring from tape to tape.<br /><br />To compensate for the noise build-up, I learned to keep the signal level above the noise floor by riding the faders and/or using compressors. To compensate for the loss of high frequencies, I learned to record my sounds slightly brighter than I wanted them to sound in the final mix.<br /><br />Being a pedantic guy, I’d fuss over each recording until every sound was clearly defined. Separation and clarity were the key words. They were in my head from the beginning of a session, influencing my microphone choice and room positions for each instrument.<br /><br />It was hard work, and that was just the recording side of it. Once I got all the sounds recorded, it was time to mix. I’d spend hours refining the balance, carefully juggling faders, pan pots, EQ and effects to ensure each sound could be heard clearly within the mix. With every sound and every effect I added to the mix, I’d listen carefully and make sure it did not adversely affect the other sounds.<br /><br />It was time consuming and laborious, but I knew my mixes sounded as good as I could make them. I wanted them to sound like a record when played back off cassette, nothing less would suffice. Remember that these early recordings were demos, destined for cassette only. There was no mastering engineer to fix any problem areas; it was up to me to get it right, no excuses.<br /><br />As my engineering skills increased, so too did the budgets of my clients. My recordings quickly went from demo tapes to independent albums destined for release on vinyl – which in turn led to my first session in a mastering studio. I strode in, full of confidence, and proudly handed my mix tape over. I was expecting Mr Mastering Engineer to be blown away by my mixes. But over the course of a couple of hours, he tore my mixes apart. He told me what was wrong, suggested numerous areas for improvement, and generally put me right in my place.<br /><br />I left crestfallen, but I endeavoured to improve my mixes nonetheless. I learned the benefits of corrective and subtractive EQ, and how removing a little bit of low midrange from a bass guitar can work wonders for the clarity and presence of a male voice within the mix. I learned about dynamic perspective, and how to avoid turning an instrument down in the mix when the musician obviously intends it to be loud (and vice versa). I learned about spatial relationships, and how to create a sense of depth with just one or two carefully adjusted delays, instead of pouring on bucket loads of reverb. My mixes got a whole lot better.<br /><br />My goal – and perhaps my revenge – was to hear Mr Mastering Engineer say, “These mixes are perfect, Greg, I don’t have to do anything to them”. Although I’ll probably never hear those words from that particular mastering engineer (he is now working in the USA), it is a goal I still aspire to. In fact, it’s a goal I thought all engineers aspired to...<br /><br />Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of teaching at Sydney’s JMC Academy. One day, I popped into a training studio where a local ‘big time’ engineer was guest supervising some student mixing sessions, and repeatedly heard him saying the following phrase: “They’ll fix that in mastering”.<br /><br />Whether it was low-mid muddiness between bass guitar and vocals, a guitar track that got slightly thin and harsh at times, or a vocal that occasionally disappeared beneath the piano, his answer was always, “They'll fix that in mastering”. Session diplomacy prevented me from saying anything at the time, but all of these problems should have been addressed in the mix.<br /><br />Pro engineers used to jokingly say, “We’ll fix it in the mix”. Now the catchphrase is, “They’ll fix it in mastering”. A simple tweak that takes a moment in the mix down becomes an hour’s work for a mastering engineer, and an hour’s expense for the client. And what if the mastering engineer can’t fix it?<br /><br />Mixing is not about making each sound as good as possible on its own, then blending them all together and hoping the result will sound good. That is like taking 24 of your favourite colours and pouring them all into the same bucket. What do you get? A grey mess, every single time. Are your mixes a grey mess? Do you think a mastering engineer can extract the individual colours from that grey mess, and recombine them for you? If so, you’re kidding yourself.<br /> <br />Mixing is about thoughtfully combining a number of different sounds together to form a cohesive whole. It is a delicate balancing act in three dimensions – volume, tone and depth – using just the right amounts of EQ, effects, panning and fader settings to bring it all together. If something isn’t right, don’t leave it for the mastering engineer to fix. It is much easier to remedy most problems in the mix, while you’ve still got access to the individual sounds. Learn how sounds interact, learn how the equipment you’ve got assists with that interaction, and start making better mixes.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Ah, the futility...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-91574101023532009862009-05-11T08:43:00.004+10:002009-05-11T08:45:07.914+10:00FFW14: Safe, clean power<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCDJfTYs0P0Qu6SsWypjU_eZcaAR9qAinsW1efAXnGmrHxNOz8c63vRwNWnMYBPo34I-3uNADFjJVIv6jQ2uoZyFUGyqtns4VRrKP_nBQ07lp_XEHR07qpkzkM9XWdD22Q1cHrAo4GaI/s1600-h/issue14cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCDJfTYs0P0Qu6SsWypjU_eZcaAR9qAinsW1efAXnGmrHxNOz8c63vRwNWnMYBPo34I-3uNADFjJVIv6jQ2uoZyFUGyqtns4VRrKP_nBQ07lp_XEHR07qpkzkM9XWdD22Q1cHrAo4GaI/s200/issue14cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334329987032812418" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">This was written as a practical follow-up to the previous First Word, ‘Acts of God, and other dirty deeds…’ (FFW13). As much as I enjoyed littering ‘Acts of God…’ with pathetic and regrettable puns, my primary goal was to offer useful advice for protecting audio equipment from lightning and similar electrical events. So in this follow-up I described the numerous devices I used to ensure my equipment was connected to clean and safe power. I’ve always taken electrical powering seriously, not just because of the damage it can do when things go wrong, but because of the effect it has on the end result. Dirty power means dirty signals, plain and simple; but more about that later. The information contained below is still valid and relevant (you can’t change physics!), but I doubt the specific product makes and models are still available. Some of the products mentioned were at least six years old when I wrote this in 2000, which means they were on sale 15 years ago. The chances of finding the same products and manufacturers are remote, at best…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Safe, clean power</span><br />In the last issue I discussed the damage caused when lightning strikes a power line, telephone line, or television antenna. This issue I’m going to look at products that protect your equipment from such damage, along with some other helpful power-related devices.<br /><br />According to the IEEE (Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers), a lightning strike on the power lines can deliver up to 20,000 volts and 10,000 amps into a building’s electrical power wiring. Such a sudden and dramatic increase in voltage and current is known as a ‘surge’. The bad news is that surges don’t only come from lightning strikes.<br /><br />The average home electrical system experiences hundreds of surges every year. The vast majority of these are not from lightning, fortunately, and are therefore not so harmful. They’re created by appliances that contain powerful electric motors and/or heating elements, such as electric heaters, washing machines, dishwashers, air conditioners, refrigerators, and power tools. Whenever such an appliance switches on there is the possibility of a power surge. If your audio system makes a thump or click when an appliance switches on, you’re hearing a surge that has managed to get into the signal path. Although these surges aren’t big enough to cause serious damage (beyond perhaps blowing a fuse), they’re big enough to confuse personal computers and other digital devices, causing them to freeze or crash. They can also make their way into your recorded sound, and may even damage your monitors.<br /><br />So what can you do about surges? The IEEE recommends two levels of protection. The first is a heavy-duty protector located in your fuse box – where the mains voltage enters the building – for frontline protection against lightning strikes and other externally generated surges. This should be supported by the use of surge protecting power boards that, apart from offering a second level of protection against externally generated surges, also protect your equipment against surges from household appliances.<br /><br />You will need a qualified electrician to install the surge protection that goes into your fuse box. If that level of protection is too expensive, at least invest in one or two surge protecting power boards. There are a number of these on the market, priced from about $30 upwards. They’re readily available from electronics and electrical retailers, home appliance centres, and hardware stores. If you’ve got a modem connected to your system, be sure to get a board that also includes protection for your telephone line.<br /><br />It is worth bearing in mind that most of the affordable protection devices use an electronic component called a Metal Oxide Varistor (MOV) to provide the protection. These components are sacrificial: the more surges they encounter, the more they degrade. So before investing in such protection, check that it has a status light to indicate the health of the MOV.<br /><br />While there are many low cost surge protecting power boards on the market, one that caught my attention is the Panamax series available from Dick Smith Electronics. It’s based on a six-way power board with a ‘Protection OK’ light to show the health of the MOV(s). Modules can be added to include protection for phone lines, antenna and cable TV wiring, RS232 computer interfaces, and more. For a couple of hundred dollars you can put together exactly the system you need.<br /><br />One step beyond surge protectors are mains filters. The mains power supplied to our buildings contains a lot of electrical noise that, like surges, plays havoc with digital equipment. At the affordable end are passive filters that are usually built into power boards. For a bit more money you can choose from a small number of active designs that provide superior performance. If you’re going to invest in a mains filter, be sure that it also includes surge protection. I have a KCC ‘Squeeky Clean’ LF-3 high-speed power and data filter with active monitoring, which I bought from David Reid Electronics six years ago. It offers protection against surges (including lightning strikes), filters out noise and other interference, protects the phone line, and has some very useful status indicators. A worthwhile investment.<br /><br />There are two electrical problems that surge protectors and filters can’t protect you from: black-outs and brown-outs. A black-out is a total power failure: the lights go out and everything turns off. A brown-out is when the mains voltage drops, or ‘sags’, significantly. When your lights dim for no apparent reason, that’s a brown-out. Both of these can interrupt your workflow, and may even damage your equipment.<br /><br />For protection against black-outs and brown-outs, you need an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). This monitors the incoming power and, when it detects a black-out or brown-out, sounds an alarm and instantly generates 240V AC from a built-in rechargeable battery system, allowing your equipment to continue functioning. Most affordable UPS’s can’t generate this replacement power for very long, but it’s enough time to save your work and power down properly. The Sola 305 range, available from Dick Smith Electronics, also includes surge protection, mains filtering, and phone line protection. Priced from $299 to $499, the more expensive models offer longer back-up time. If you’re considering a UPS, be sure to get one with sufficient power rating for your equipment; otherwise, it might only provide a few seconds of backup power.<br /><br />Apart from the obvious benefits of these products, providing clean power to your system may also improve the sound quality. The KCC filter I use improves the sound of my location recording rig in certain electrically noisy environments. But the biggest sonic improvement I’ve heard from any power device comes from balanced power. I’ve been using the locally-made Peach Audio balanced power supply and filter for the last four years, and it never ceases to amaze me – especially when taking analogue signals from digital sources. Improvements range from subtle to blatantly obvious. Balanced power is also good for minimising the humming and buzzing associated with tube guitar amplifiers, and avoiding certain earth problems. When all else fails, balanced power to the rescue!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">So, how can dirty mains power affect the cleanliness of your audio signal? To explain that properly requires a lesson in electricity, which I’m not prepared to give here. Instead, let’s use a simple analogy…<br /><br />Imagine a mountain with a number of villages on its slopes. Snow falls on the top of the mountain, melts and causes a stream to flow down its side. Each village takes water from the stream for drinking, cooking, washing, sewerage and so on, and tips the dirty water onto the ground, where some finds its way back into the stream. The village at the top gets pure fresh water, directly off the melting snow. The village at the bottom gets a cocktail of freshly melted snow mixed with dirty water from each of the villages upstream. The inhabitants of the top village can safely drink from the stream, but those at the bottom wouldn’t dare! They’ll need to filter and sterilise the water before it is safe for drinking.<br /><br />The power wiring that runs through our cities, buildings and homes is very much like that mountain stream, beginning at the electricity generator and making its way through our streets. Each house and building draws power from the mains wiring, and some of its unwanted ‘dirty’ power ends up back on the power line. The further downstream you are from the generator, the dirtier your power gets. To make it worse, the people operating the generators are adding ‘dirt’ to the electricity before it even hits the power lines; for example, special signals to control off-peak hot water systems and so on. This is like adding fluoride to the mountain stream to improve the dental health of the villagers – the intentions may be good, but if you don’t want it then you need to filter it out.<br /><br />Many audio products don’t have sufficient filtering in their internal power supplies to remove these unwanted signals; such filtering adds to the cost of the product but offers no measured differences in laboratory conditions (where the powering is inherently clean), and therefore has no marketing value. Without such filtering, the unwanted signals pass through the internal power supply and manifest as part of the audio signal. In some cases they are clearly audible as clicks, hums and buzzes, in others they form a layer of grit in the background that makes your recordings sound dirtier and cheaper than intended. Your best bet for clean and safe power is a combination of: 1) protection against surges, 2) filtering to remove most of the unwanted dirt, and 3) balanced power to neutralise the effects of any remaining dirt.<br /><br />Alternatively, do as I’ve done and wean your audio system off the dirty communal mains power altogether. Switch to battery power and say goodbye to hums, buzzes, clicks, pops and all that other grit.</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-55552504710517561422009-05-02T12:31:00.012+10:002009-05-02T21:20:48.358+10:00FFW13: Acts of God, and other dirty deeds…<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOjN3fs-VAmJY9DEDL0xZArZh0At3XiGFOmB2u_ny8Y60cES5FNHKYwl6Q8LWufZmc6Fpje7oMifh_Y6cp-_-DJz5-64ROGbrP1d3KUuX2zS3SOikWMwPdNGUMRgPS8mSOWKVnN0Hvf9I/s1600-h/issue13cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOjN3fs-VAmJY9DEDL0xZArZh0At3XiGFOmB2u_ny8Y60cES5FNHKYwl6Q8LWufZmc6Fpje7oMifh_Y6cp-_-DJz5-64ROGbrP1d3KUuX2zS3SOikWMwPdNGUMRgPS8mSOWKVnN0Hvf9I/s200/issue13cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331049145305935922" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">I’ve always been awestruck by the power of electrical storms, but growing up in the miserable city of Melbourne, Australia, meant I was denied such spectacles for most of my youth. In that godforsaken city, electrical storms manifest as distant rumbles accompanied by harmless flashes of light occurring somewhere behind the many layers of clouds that are permanent residents of the Melbourne skyline; if you were really lucky, you might glimpse some cloud-to-cloud fork lightning, but usually not.<br /><br />One of the small bonuses of moving to Sydney in 1987 was the chance to experience decent electrical storms, with cloud-to-ground and ground-to-cloud fork lightning being commonplace. Moving North of Sydney revealed even more sky-borne drama. While working in Brisbane as an Audio Operator for World Expo ’88 I enjoyed watching thunderheads build in the afternoon heat, and eagerly anticipated the early evening when they would release their awesome power. In October 1990 I spent an evening picking off leeches in a bamboo hut in Northern Thailand while an absolutely incredible electrical storm passed overhead.<br /><br />But my favourite electrical storms take place in Kathmandu during the monsoon. I have experienced many of them passing directly overhead; long, low and loud, with lightning that stroboscopes the city and thunder that rattles the windows open… fantastic! But what do electrical storms have to do with audio? Not much, until one hits your house - as discussed in the following First Word, published in issue 13 of AudioTechnology sometime in early 2000.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Acts of God, and other dirty deeds…</span><br />It was not unexpected. I was sitting by a window at The Exhibition Hotel enjoying Christmas drinks with some graduates from Sydney’s JMC Academy when, suddenly, I felt my hair standing on end. Moments later, all hell broke loose with a big bang. The windows and doors rattled violently, and the guy next to me sputtered beer down his T-shirt. A barmaid dropped a bottle of Vodka, and a young girl screamed… and screamed again. Some pool cues slapped to the floor, adding to the chaos. Across the road, in Prince Alfred Park, a man fell to his knees, shielding his head as the fractured cover of a street lamp tumbled to the ground and shattered. When it was over, the screaming girl burst into tears, and an elderly woman at the pokies looked around the room, slowly cursing “Holy Mother of Mary” through the haze of her cigarette.<br /><br />It was definitely not unexpected. I’d been watching the menacing thunderhead of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Cumulonimbus Incus</span> taking shape all afternoon, imagining the chaos inside its dark anvil shape. Warm air rising to the top, forming ice crystals. Cool air falling to the base, forming water droplets. As these air currents moved past each other, I thought about the massive electrical charges building up inside – positive at the top, negative at the bottom. And as the charges built up, I could feel the corresponding positive charge forming on the ground beneath the cloud, tracking its every move like an invisible electrical shadow. It’s enough to make your hair stand on end, literally.<br /><br />And so the charge builds and builds. If conditions remain suitable, it reaches such an incredibly high voltage that it overcomes the electrical insulation of the air. <span style="font-style:italic;">Can you imagine it?</span> Millions of volts punching thousands of amps through the very air we breathe, sending a lightning bolt slamming into the ground at 96,000 kilometres per second. It would be silent if it weren’t for the heat – and I do mean ‘heat’. A lightning bolt’s temperature exceeds 22,000° Celsius! It instantaneously superheats the air it passes through, causing a rapid expansion and contraction of air pressure. And thus we get thunder, the sound of the sky being torn apart. Mother Nature’s way of reminding us that, despite our mastery of electricity, she’s still holding the electrodes.<br /><br />A direct hit from one of these things could short-circuit your life. But luckily, what we experienced was not a direct hit. The lightning bolt struck a tall metal street lamp in the park across the road, about 20m away, producing intense stroboscopic flashes of pink light – pink being a telltale sign of rain in the cloud – accompanied by a crack of thunder that easily qualified as the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. The top end was like four horsemen cracking their whips in your face, while the bottom end would give even the most affluent DJ a wet dream – or perhaps just wet pants. And then, that familiar smell of high voltage in the air, a smell I remember from poking around in the back of old televisions, and working inside high voltage substations. Dangerous stuff… “Armageddon outa here!” I joked to the guy sitting next to me, but he was too busy mopping up his beer.<br /><br />This particular lightning bolt hit a street lamp, and, apart from scaring a lot of people, there was no real harm done: one damaged street lamp, one smashed bottle of Vodka, a stained T-shirt, and a lot of frayed nerves! But imagine if it hit your telephone line…<br /><br />No doubt you’ve got a modem connected to your phone line. On the other end of that modem is your personal computer, right? And connected to your personal computer, via numerous electrical interfaces, is your complete studio. One lightning hit on your telephone line and it’s all gone, done, finito! Not to mention what might happen if you’re actually using the studio at the time. Quite a revelation, huh?<br /><br />I don’t like being a fear monger, but over the last year I’ve heard at least three stories of complete computer-based studios being destroyed by lightning strikes. One acquaintance lost over $100,000 worth of computer-based studio – not even his monitors were spared. Thanks to an inappropriate insurance policy that listed lightning as an ‘act of God’ and therefore not claimable, he’s still out of business. Good one, God!<br /><br />Your phone line is not the only way lightning can attack your system. Lightning can also strike power lines, so, unless your entire studio runs on batteries, the AC power wiring can provide another path for lightning to get into your system – especially if the electrical wiring in your building is not up to specification. Older buildings, faulty and/or illegal wiring, and so on can all increase your chances of damage.<br /><br />But wait, there’s more! David Turnbull, an audio technician at the Sydney Opera House, recently told me how lightning hit his neighbour’s TV antenna and found its way into the 240V AC mains wiring, destroying just about every electrical item in their house: TV, VCR, hi-fi system, clock radio, phone, fridge, and so on. If your studio is electrically connected to a VCR with an outdoor antenna on the end of it, lightning gets another chance to ruin your day.<br /><br />Now that I’ve got you totally paranoid, what can you do about it? Tracey Thorn sums it up nicely when she sings “I’ll stand in front of you and take the force of the blow”. You need protection against such massive attacks. And it’s not difficult to achieve.<br /><br />Prevention is always better than cure. Considering that you can’t prevent lightning from happening, your next best option is to prevent it from getting into your system. The safest thing you can do is disconnect your studio from the power point, phone line and/or TV antenna whenever there’s an electrical storm in your area. But that’s not particularly productive, and it’s not particularly effective if you’re not there when the storm hits!<br /><br />A smarter option is to invest in proper electrical protection. Apart from protecting your system, it may also improve the stability and sound of your digital equipment. But more about that next issue. For now, keep your eye on the sky. Oh, and do take a second look at your insurance policy. Lightning may seem like the work of the devil, but apparently it’s an act of God…<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">One of my favourite audio past-times is to record the sound of electrical storms, but it’s not an easy task. Thunderclaps are deceptively difficult to record. They may seem easy because the thunder usually arrives a couple of seconds after a lightning flash, so you get a good indication of when to enter record mode (it is especially helpful if your recorder has a pre-record buffer like my Nagra V, which seamlessly appends the previous 20 seconds of audio to the recorded file so I don’t miss a thing). The difficulty begins with getting the levels right, because each thunderclap is unique and doesn’t provide a soundcheck. To make the task even more frustrating and disappointing, very loud thunderclaps are often distorted before they reach the microphone. Why? Because at very high sound pressure levels the air itself distorts. How?<br /><br />As you may know, sound energy travels through the air as a series of compressions (i.e. increases) and rarefactions (i.e. decreases) of atmospheric pressure. Although the air can be compressed considerably, it can only be rarefied until it reaches a vacuum, at which point it literally runs out of headroom and clips. This occurs at approximately 170dB SPL. Any sound energy exceeding this point is clipped on the rarefactions and, assuming your recording/editing system is wired in correct polarity throughout, you will see the clipping on the negative half cycles of the waveform only. Bear in mind, however, that it can be difficult to identify the clipping when viewing the waveform due to the air’s absorption of high frequencies over distance, which tends to ‘round out’ the clipped waveform as if it were passed through a low pass filter – which is, in fact, exactly what the air is doing. You can hear the clipping, but you can’t always see it. People who record explosions (including large fireworks) and rocket launches face the same problem.<br /><br />Other factors to consider when attempting to capture The Perfect Thunderclap are the enormously high static discharges in the air, which can reputedly induce preamp-overloading surges in microphone cables (although I have never experienced this), and the possibility of power blackouts, which render mains-powered recording systems useless. Furthermore, to minimise comb filtering due to reflections from the ground and other nearby surfaces, it makes sense to use a very tall microphone stand and position it in an open space away from other buildings, preferably on top of the tallest building in the area – just like a lightning rod connected to your head via your headphones and recording gear. Maybe that’s not such a good idea…<br /><br />When I was about nine years old my parents gave me a copy of </span>The How & Why Wonder Book of Electricity<span style="font-style:italic;">, and I became fascinated with Benjamin Franklin’s lightning experiment with the kite, the wire and the key. By the age of 12 I had failed to repeat the experiment on numerous occasions. My kite, complete with wire and key, remained hidden under my bed, ready and waiting for the next electrical storm. But unfortunately I grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne (as mentioned at the start of this Famous First Word), where thunderstorms rarely have the required combination of wind and fork lightning to get a kite off the ground, let alone struck. I should probably be thankful for that…</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-41567282172213751112009-04-19T14:32:00.005+10:002009-04-19T14:42:45.433+10:00FFW12: Encouragement & Recognition<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQQ1U-w16eO2bSX-x0-u2EBUxed-sA23jn47RCX9yQr3etK5d_S7CyrfvYyJMWtaADtV6A_rVVawFpTUhRB7X7Xh3svQqYxP_49j6Wju6Mme_GYmWd7plrvAivhkGK7k6O4ieanf2l4m4/s1600-h/issue12cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQQ1U-w16eO2bSX-x0-u2EBUxed-sA23jn47RCX9yQr3etK5d_S7CyrfvYyJMWtaADtV6A_rVVawFpTUhRB7X7Xh3svQqYxP_49j6Wju6Mme_GYmWd7plrvAivhkGK7k6O4ieanf2l4m4/s200/issue12cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326256060837028162" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">I’ve already explained the importance of the ARIA awards in previous Famous First Words (see FFW06 and FFW08); whoever wins one of those can look forward to at least a year’s worth of regular engineering and/or production work, perhaps longer if they play their cards right. It’s a pity that something so important is handled so badly from behind the scenes…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Encouragement & Recognition</span><br />Over the past year I’ve done a lot of direct-to-stereo recordings of orchestras and other acoustic acts in concert halls, churches and pubs. One of the great difficulties with this type of recording is monitoring. Because I’m often located in the same space as the performers it’s not possible to use studio monitors, so I’ve had to resort to headphones. Classical recording engineers have been doing this for years, but for a multitrack studio guy like myself the thought of doing a direct-to-stereo recording using headphones for monitoring is unnerving – unless you’ve got the right ones. So, after much research and listening, I settled on a pair of Sennheiser HD600s. They’re exceptionally transparent, with very low distortion, effortless dynamics, superb midrange detail, and a response that’s smooth as a baby’s bum from 16Hz all the way up to 30kHz. Even your dog will like ‘em! If you want better cans than these you’d have to buy electrostatics, but they’re way out of my budget. Even the $800+ asking price for the HD600s is pretty steep, but they’re worth every cent.<br /><br />And so it was that one night in early November I found myself in a small pub near Central, where an acoustic ensemble was playing backing tracks for a collection of aspiring vocalists. The evening was an opportunity for these vocalists to polish their performance skills in front of a small and sympathetic audience – mostly consisting of other aspiring vocalists waiting their turn!<br /><br />Some friends of mine, Brendan Frost and Glenn Santry, were using my rig to record this particular night’s performance, and I dropped in to see how it was going. “Take a listen”, said Glenn, handing me the HD600s while diplomatically donning my older cans. As we sat there listening and discussing the merits of the vocalist currently on stage, I had a flashback to my childhood TV days: images of a judging panel wearing headphones while a performer on stage was strutting her stuff.<br /><br />Okay, hands up if you remember New Faces, the long running TV talent quest hosted by Bert Newton? If not, I’m sure you can guess the format: aspiring entertainers perform in front of a studio audience and a panel of judges, hoping to launch a career in show business. (You can put your hands down now.) Unlike talent quests sponsored by fizzy drink companies, tacky ISPs, and other youth market vultures who know nothing about exposing genuine new talent, New Faces was the real deal. The judges were qualified industry professionals who offered plenty of constructive criticism, and Bert Newton was, as always, the consummate television host.<br /><br />After the winners were announced and awards given out, Bert would present a special award to the performer he thought deserved the most encouragement – regardless of whether they won the show or not. He called it ‘The Bert Newton Encouragement Award’, and it became my favourite part of New Faces. As a particularly flat note brought me back to the reality of the small pub near Central, I began wondering which vocalist would have received Bert’s award if he’d been there on the night.<br /><br />Speaking of talent quests and awards, did anyone notice something strange at the last ARIAs? It happened very quickly, and if you were watching the show on TV and blinked, you would’ve missed it altogether. The category for Engineer Of The Year had five winners. That’s right; five. Not three, not four, but five! F.I.V.E. Cinque, cinco, fünf? Nyet! How can this be? I can tell you that the systems for nominating and voting this year were changed. I’m sure the changes were intended to be an improvement, but I certainly hope ARIA refine it next year so we don’t get another five winners. In a market as small as ours, it is hard enough for one Engineer Of The Year to find work, let alone five!<br /><br />Congratulations to all the winners nonetheless, and I’m pleased to see some of my own nominations included among them. But my first choice did not even rate a mention. Before I tell you who it was, let me explain my judging process…<br /><br />In Volume One, Issue Six of AudioTechnology [see FFW06], I outlined the comprehensive and time-consuming process I used to vote for last year’s ARIAs. Then, in Volume Two, Issue Two, I described my disappointment with the amount of Australian mixing and mastering work going overseas – and copped quite a whipping for it! [see FFW08 and FFW09] This year, I simply didn’t have the time to listen to each and every CD that was nominated, so I had to apply a culling process.<br /><br />Firstly, I scanned the credits of every CD looking for overseas involvement. If it was tracked, mixed or mastered by overseas engineers, I’d yell “OUT!” and gleefully spin the unheard disc into the reject box. It was gone, done, finito! Secondly, I tested each disc for translation. A well-engineered recording should sound ‘right’ through any playback system. So, I auditioned each disc through my ATCs, my NS10s, and my Sennheiser HD600s. Many discs, particularly those aimed at the pop market, kicked arse on the NS10s but were reduced to muddy crap when heard under the scrutiny of the ATCs or the HD600s. My reject box filled rapidly! I was eventually left with a dozen discs, to which I applied the same rigorous procedure I used for judging last year’s ARIAs.<br /><br />I am not a fan of Dave Graney, and I’ve never met Adam Rhodes, but I must say that the album ‘Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye’ by The Dave Graney Show, engineered and mixed by Adam Rhodes, is a classy and competent piece of sound engineering. It sounds good on the ATCs, the NS10s, and the HD600s. It has a sense of depth and dimension, and it’s not vainly trying to produce a million dollar sound on a $100 budget. Congratulations to all involved. And as for Adam, he wins the inaugural ‘Greg Simmons Encouragement Award’ - a pair of Sennheiser HD600s courtesy of Syntec International. It’s not an ARIA, but, with five Engineers Of The Year running around out there, the HD600s will probably be a lot more practical! And please, keep up the good work, Adam.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Upon joining the judging panel for the ARIA awards, I asked for all of the CDs for which engineers and producers had been nominated. My contact at ARIA was perplexed by this request. Dumbfounded, I patiently explained that I couldn’t possibly judge the quality of engineering and production work without listening to the recordings themselves. This was a perfectly reasonable argument, of course, and a box of 40 or so CDs landed on my doorstep shortly afterwards. Likewise one year later. But on the third year they objected, saying I was the only one of a dozen or so judges who asked for the CDs. I don’t know how the other judges made their decisions, but it sure as hell wasn’t from listening to the recordings – unless they happened to be extremely keen fans of Australian-produced music in all shapes and forms, and already owned every CD on the list. Considering the scope of music covered by the nominations (everything from hard rock to soft baroque), I found that highly unlikely. Other factors were obviously at play in the judges’ minds; perhaps basing their decisions on chart figures, sales success, or even less relevant and/or less honest means. Whatever the case, I rapidly began to lose interest in the whole thing. And when five engineers won the same award simultaneously, I knew the system was screwed. Hence, the encouragement award mentioned above; it was my diplomatic way of sidestepping the whole mess. These days I couldn’t give a diplomat’s arse about the ‘industry’ per se, so I’m writing it as I remember it.<br /><br />As for the HD600s, I thought they were the most incredible dynamic headphones on the market – as did every other keen listener of quality audio! With a pair of HD600s in my possession, I figured I had the headphone problem solved forever. Although I felt their stereo imaging was below par, no one else seemed to mention it so I figured it must’ve been my ears. Considering how well they did everything else, I was prepared to cut them some slack. Besides, my good friend Glenn Santry* (mentioned at the start of this First Word) had a pair of AKG K501s that imaged very well, thanks to an interesting driver orientation that placed the drivers forward of the ears and angled towards them, rather than sitting flush beside each ear. They didn’t share the clarity and resolution of the HD600s, but were good performers nonetheless. In those days Glenn and I made a lot of recordings together, and switching between my HD600s and his K501s was standard procedure; using each pairs’ individual strengths while avoiding their individual weaknesses. A bit like switching between main monitors and NS10s when mixing…<br /><br />Some time later Sennheiser released the superior HD650 headphones. Apart from being more revealing than the HD600s, they imaged particularly well thanks to a new driver orientation that was remarkably similar to the K501’s. They were on my shopping list for years, right up until January 2008 when I reluctantly auditioned a pair of similarly priced Audio-Technica AD1000s at the insistence of one of my students. At first listen, the AD1000s sounded bland and uninteresting; but after an hour or so I began to appreciate them.<br /><br />The AD1000s outperform the HD650s in every way that matters; in fact, after wearing them for a while, switching back to the HD650s feels as if the sound is being forced into your ears through funnels. Most of the HD600 and HD650 users I know who have the opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison with the AD1000s have a similar reaction. The AD1000s are now my quality reference headphones. In fact, all of my headphones are now Audio-Technicas, but more about that some other time...<br /><br />[*Glenn Santry’s wife Mel recently gave birth to a baby boy named Noah. He’s a happy little guy with fair hair and big blue lady-killer eyes, but it’s going to be chaos around their house when it comes time to buy him a pet. He’ll want two of everything.]</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-71275669573756843962009-04-11T12:08:00.019+10:002009-04-18T08:53:57.532+10:00FFW11: Parasites & Patrons Of The Arts<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLiWoc3w1frbFTLEtKf_6I587rZox61pJISrdP-ulFl79cA99jPFc7dF-XYQ49PsNlPGIH5jGLy5ElONe_-6fS_Yeg5GAVwv3VLv5sKOg7l5yVKGtoN-H4BJiu9LNG8-WAEBRyEaKmEk/s1600-h/issue11cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjLiWoc3w1frbFTLEtKf_6I587rZox61pJISrdP-ulFl79cA99jPFc7dF-XYQ49PsNlPGIH5jGLy5ElONe_-6fS_Yeg5GAVwv3VLv5sKOg7l5yVKGtoN-H4BJiu9LNG8-WAEBRyEaKmEk/s200/issue11cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323251167095054434" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">When viewed organically, the entire music industry can be seen for what it really is: an ugly parasite living on the lifeblood of musicians. Like any successful parasite, the goal of the music industry is to extract as much sustenance as possible from its host, without killing it - a careful balancing act. So if you intend to work as a sound engineer in the music industry, there are two things you must do from the start. First, you must acknowledge your status as a parasite; otherwise you’re not going to make a living. Second, you must acknowledge that your clients will be among the poorest people in Western society – musicians – therefore, every cent you extract from them is not likely to come easily.<br /><br />Novice engineers, in particular, feel a strong affinity with musicians and tend to do much more work than their clients can afford, simply because it is fun and/or they enjoy the music and/or the client is currently considered 'cool' (whatever that means). This usually results in a lot more giving than taking. In effect, the engineer becomes a patron of the arts. But eventually they realise that if they’re going to make a living, they’ve got to start earning decent money. They have to switch from being a </span>patron<span style="font-style:italic;"> of the arts to a </span>parasite<span style="font-style:italic;"> of the arts. But is it possible to do it in a mutually beneficial manner?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Parasites & Patrons Of The Arts</span><br />In ‘91 I spent some time with a small but intrepid group of people trekking through the Amazon rainforest in Peru. Our adventure began in the village of Cuzco, high in the Andes, where the air is thin, cold and dry. After a headlong 4WD descent down a trail clinging desperately to the side of a mountain, we emerged beneath the cloud forest and entered the stifling humidity of the Amazon basin. Exhausted, we transferred our backpacks into powered longboats and spent two days motoring down river, sleeping under the stars on a tiny island formed where two waterways collided. Our destination turned out to be a small beach on the shores of the Amazon, deep within the Manu National Park. This was our home for the next two weeks, so we pitched our tents and made peace with the crocodiles, piranhas and anacondas that were our new neighbours.<br /><br />It was the early days of eco-tourism. Our guide, a biologist named Barry, took us on numerous forays into the rainforest, revealing something new and interesting with every step: trees that ‘walk’, leaf-cutting ants that farm aphids for food, communal spiders that weave collective webs and share the bounty, and so on. But it was the symbiotic relationships between different species that really stuck in my mind. Barry stopped by a small tree and warned us to never lean against one. He tapped the trunk and it was instantly covered in agitated red ants, heads raised and mandibles open, ready to attack. Judging by the volume of ants that had been hiding inside the tree’s slender trunk, I doubt there was much actual wood left in there! But that’s how this particular relationship worked - the tree sacrificed some of its bulk to provide a home for the ants, and in return the ants protected the tree. That’s symbiosis for you.<br /><br />After returning from the Amazon, I started a small business doing audio editing and basic mastering. I had $20,000 worth of pro equipment, very low overheads, and a rather organic view of life. My strategy was to charge a low rate to attract plenty of work, and I figured I’d be happy to earn $25 per hour. I spent $50 per week on small ads in the local street press, and my phone was soon running hot. Within a few months I was booked 12 hours per day, seven days per week. My plan was working.<br /><br />Or was it? Despite all the bookings, I was not making any money. I was working every minute of every day, yet my business was like treading water – if I stopped for a rest, I’d drown. According to my initial figures, I should’ve been comfortable at $25 per hour. What went wrong?<br /><br />The reality is that when you charge a rate that appeals to the rock bottom of the market, that’s precisely what you get - the rock bottom of the market! The majority of my clients were struggling musicians with no money, whose cheap and dire recordings needed the most amount of fixing to make them sound acceptable. Because I took pride in my work and couldn’t bear to see something leave my studio that wasn’t as good as I could possibly make it, I would often put many unpaid hours into these jobs. No wonder I wasn’t making any money – I had become a patron of the arts, not a businessman!<br /><br />Then one night I was telling Rick O’Neil my tale of woe. “Double your rate”, he said authoritatively. This seemed like a terrible idea. “But I’ll lose all my regular clients and my competitive advantage”, I replied. “It can’t be much of a ‘competitive advantage’ if you’re not making any money!” mocked Rick, “And the clients you’re attracting can’t pay for the level of work you’re giving them, so they’re not worth your effort”. “I dunno”, I said, shaking my head and feeling rather uncertain about the idea. “Well, you asked for my advice…” said Rick, and promptly changed the subject to the latest piece of gear he’d bought.<br /><br />At a trade show a week later, I spoke with an engineer who had a similar system to mine, but was charging $80 per hour. I asked how he justified it. “I don’t work much, but when I do, I get well paid for it,” he said, then laughed, “and I send you all the cheapo time-wasting jobs I can’t be bothered with!” By charging more, he created the impression that he was offering a higher quality service than I was. He made more in a day than I made in a week – and he had time to have a life! The whole engineer/musician relationship was working nicely for him.<br /><br />I started thinking about the ants and their trees. The symbiotic relationship between them is not dissimilar to the relationship between engineers and musicians. In order for the ants to do their job and protect the trees properly, the trees have to make a significant sacrifice (i.e. having their insides hollowed out to provide a home for the ants!).<br /><br />Suddenly, it became very clear to me. I resolved to double my rate for all new clients, and keep my existing regular clients at the old rate for another 12 months. Bookings dropped off, but business and life picked up. I was working less time for the same money, and I was attracting a better class of client with bigger budgets and higher quality recordings to work with. I finally felt like a small businessman, not a patron of the arts.<br /><br />Engineers and musicians are not unlike those ants and their trees. As a professional engineer, if you charge too much you may not survive – like the ants killing the tree by hollowing out too much. But if you charge too little you also may not survive – like the tree accommodating insufficient ants to protect it. Musicians need engineers to make their music heard, and engineers need musicians to make their livelihood. Is the symbiosis working for you?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Since writing that First Word back in late 1999 or early 2000, I have extended my parasitic logic even further. I advise all of my audio students to tool up with basic recording equipment (laptop, interface, a handful of microphones), but warn them against building any serious kind of recording facility. Why? Because in every city there are a handful of small, well-built studios hungry for work. Built before the advent of the project studio, when sound quality actually mattered and there was work aplenty, these places are often owned and operated by experienced engineers with good selections of microphones and other recording equipment. Rather than spending vast amounts of money to become yet another hungry studio owner, it is smarter to hire one of these existing facilities for those few occasions when such a space is required. You can walk in with a ProTools session file, add whatever you can’t record at home or elsewhere, and then walk out again. The cost of the studio hire is charged to your clients, of course. It’s a win/win situation, and you’re not left with the huge financial burden that many professional recording studios have become. As a contemporary sound engineer, you become a parasite with two hosts: musicians and studio owners. More hosts means greater chances of survival, right?</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-9926420212744151242009-04-04T16:48:00.006+11:002009-04-18T08:53:02.215+10:00FFW10: 124g of pot, $600 + GST<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXxjacB043dhyphenhyphengUchwVttEVnB0QkzD-vm98zlQFb4Hug7Kt6MrgNp1rSKzSE3FE52gpt0mqX9IgSESaj-MatuFaBhRz_n5WW1tPOSRYf83KWggBGeXQY4xnmrqi1IhzLnhhI2hoBXrItE/s1600-h/issue10cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXxjacB043dhyphenhyphengUchwVttEVnB0QkzD-vm98zlQFb4Hug7Kt6MrgNp1rSKzSE3FE52gpt0mqX9IgSESaj-MatuFaBhRz_n5WW1tPOSRYf83KWggBGeXQY4xnmrqi1IhzLnhhI2hoBXrItE/s200/issue10cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320709787878648002" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">After savaging the industry in FFW08 and savaging myself in FFW09, I decided to focus my energies on talking about audio equipment for a while - as suggested in the closing comment for FFW09, which read: "Next issue, I'm going to talk about equipment"! This was something I could write authoritatively about without relying on others (i.e. A&R people and their ilk) for fundamental information to underpin an argument.<br /><br />So for FFW10 I wrote about a simple passive volume control I had recently built. Initially made to demonstrate high quality audiophile recordings, it spent most of its life as my mastering/monitoring controller, placed between the analogue outputs of my DAC and the inputs to my ATC SCM20A SL Pro studio monitors. Why not use a mixing console or audio interface for this task? Apart from being unnecessarily complex, such devices add more noise and colouration to the signal being monitored, while simultaneously reducing the signal path’s headroom. ‘The Pot’, as it came to be known, was an elegant and extremely high quality alternative. Expensive when considered in isolation, but a bargain when considered in context. It became quite popular among my audio buddies, who would often borrow it for situations that required a clean way to control audio levels.<br /><br />Here’s FFW10, from sometime in late 1999 or early 2000…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">124g of pot, $600 + GST?</span><br />It was a typical Melbourne day - cold and raining one minute, hot and sunny the next. But the problem with this particular day was that it happened in Sydney. So I decided to stay indoors and sit it out. And then it struck me – this was the ideal time to try the pot I had stashed away at the back of my bookshelf. After all, I’d been saving it for a rainy day.<br /><br />I reached into the package and gently rolled the contents onto the palm of my hand, watching it glisten in a brief flash of sunlight and inhaling the characteristic ‘new’ smell. “Time to fire it up”, I thought, and proceeded to unwind the nut from the mounting shaft…<br /><br />Wait a minute! Nut? Mounting shaft? The pot I’m talking about is a contraction of the word ‘potentiometer’, the electronic component found beneath the knobs on your audio equipment. Potentiometers are used for faders, EQ, auxiliary sends, and anything else that offers continuously variable adjustment between two extremes. What kind of pot did you think I was talking about? Marijuana? Get real!<br /><br />Like most mind-altering substances, marijuana affects your hearing, usually making things sound much better than they actually are. Any engineer who uses that kind of pot for mixing is obviously an idiot.<br /><br />Now, back to our potentiometer. The unit in the palm of my hand was made by Penny & Giles, part no. RF15/D/2, 10k ohms, dual audio taper. It’s a precision piece of hand-made electronic art, all stainless steel with blue plastic insulation and gold plated contacts. This is one type of pot that really does make things sound better. So why had I been saving it for a rainy day?<br /><br />Some time ago I was doing a series of sound quality demonstrations at the Sydney campus of the JMC Academy. I was playing 24-bit 96k recordings from a Sony DVP-S715 DVD player into my ATC SCM20A active monitors. Ideally, I would’ve plugged the output of the DVD player directly into the ATCs, but I needed volume control. I tried all kinds of things, from low cost little ‘utility’ mixers to ultra-expensive preamplifiers. But no matter what I used in this very simple signal path, its inherent noises and distortions added their own characteristic flavour to the sound. So, in desperation, I went to the very essence of volume control - a single potentiometer in the signal path. No active electronics to generate noise and distortion, no power supply to generate hum, and heaps of headroom! I went to Dick Smith Electronics and bought a 10k ohm dual logarithmic pot – a good choice for making a passive stereo volume control – along with a small diecast box, four RCA sockets and a huge knob. The whole shebang cost about $30. I raced home and put it together.<br /><br />It was certainly very clean and quiet, but, in comparison to the active circuits I had tried previously, it seemed ever so slightly dull. Nonetheless, I used it for my demonstrations.<br /><br />Not long after, I discussed the dullness with Rick Dowel of Control Devices, the Australian distributor for Penny & Giles. “Greg,” he said in his characteristically knowing tone, “I have just the thing for you”. After rummaging through his drawers for a moment, he tossed the RF15/D/2 across the desk and into my hand. It was surprisingly heavy. “This pot is ideal for the passive situation you’re describing - very low stray capacitance, and therefore much better high frequency performance.” I twisted the shaft between my thumb and forefinger, and sensed the precision engineering within. “Bet it’s real cheap,” I said mockingly. “$600 plus tax” he replied sternly. “Can I hang onto it for a rainy day?” I asked. “It’s raining today…” he interjected. “But I’m kinda busy today,” I said, pocketing the pot and making a beeline for the door. “I want it back real soon!” Rick yelled as the elevator closed behind me…<br /><br />Needless to say, the RF15/D/2 was a major improvement over the standard $4.50 pot I’d been using. The dullness was gone, but that wasn’t all. The overall sound was more fluid and smooth. The RF15/D/2’s conductive plastic element made the carbon element in the $4.50 pot sound granular and harsh - just like carbon, I suppose.<br /><br />But there’s more. One of the most impressive aspects of the RF15/D/2 is its excellent linearity between left and right channels – as you adjust the volume, the centre image stays dead centre. It’s a very ‘pure’ experience. According to Rick, the left and right sides are hand-matched to exacting tolerances – one of the reasons for the pot’s high price. (Cheaper pots don’t have such excellent linearity, and so the centre image actually moves slightly left and right as you make volume adjustments.)<br /><br />After using the RF15/D/2 for a while, I realised I never turned it beyond the 11 o’clock position. Considering the price, I figured I was only using a fraction of what I was paying for! So, I put a 10k ohm carbon resistor in series with each input. This dropped the overall level by 50% (-6dB), and allowed me to use more of the pot’s rotation for the same monitoring level. It also raised the pot’s overall input resistance to 20k ohms, which gave me a bit more ‘air’ from the DVD player (important when playing 24-bit 96k recordings). But, traces of the granular and harsh sound of carbon were back! So, I put together a small collection of 10k ohm resistors of different compositions, and conducted a semi-formal AB test with two keen-eared sound engineering students (Jay and Geon) to decide which ones were best. Believe it or not, we settled on metal foil resistors from the French manufacturer Vishay. These puppies cost about $15 each. In comparison, the carbon resistors I started with cost less than 10 cents each!<br /><br />When it comes to high quality audio, you have to spend a lot more money to get a little more sound. Every single component in the signal path – every resistor and capacitor, every transistor and chip, every tube and transformer – has a characteristic sound. Collectively, they all contribute to the sound of a particular product.<br /><br />You could build a passive volume control like the one described above for about $30 using standard ‘off-the-shelf’ carbon resistors and a potentiometer. Or, you could build the same thing using the Penny & Giles RF15/D/2 and the Vishay resistors, and pay about 30 times more! Theoretically, they’re identical, but in practice the more expensive unit sounds and feels a lot better. It’s the kind of pot you should be getting high on…<br /><br />Next time you’re comparing two similar products at radically different price points, consider this story.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">At the time this First Word was written, Dick Smith Electronics carried a range of small diecast aluminium hobby boxes with grey enamel finishes. They looked quite smart, and I used them to house numerous audio utility projects that were collectively known as Simmo’s Magic Grey Boxes. The Pot was one of these; housed in a small box slightly larger than a cigarette pack, with a large black knob (about 3cm diameter and 3cm height) protruding through the top that gave it a very funky Zen look. But that large knob wasn’t just for looks; the Penny & Giles pot was very stiff to turn, but felt fantastic when used with a large diameter knob for greater leverage and resolution. Overall, it looked good, felt great and sounded fantastic.<br /><br />The Universal Connector/Switcher was another Magic Grey Box. It could select one of two stereo inputs and route it to one of two stereo outputs; each XLR socket could have pins two and three reversed (polarity inversion), along with a number of pin 1 termination possibilities. It was great for interconnecting different devices, checking the best way to interconnect pin one for lowest hum and noise, and comparing polarity. I often used it to select alternative inputs (e.g. DAW, CD player) and direct them to alternative outputs (e.g. two different pairs of studio monitors), and it also came in handy for AB testing of signal paths by placing The Pot in one side and the device under test in the other side. It proved particularly useful for judging the ARIA awards, where I would use it to switch between my ATCs for judging absolute quality and my Yamaha NS10s for judging translation.<br /><br />Another Magic Grey Box was the Mackie Fixer, a two-channel mic level device that provided a -20dB pad switch and a polarity inversion switch for each channel. Placed between the output of a microphone and the input of a Mackie mixer, it provided the all-important pad and polarity invert switches that were sorely missing from those otherwise well-conceived products.<br /><br />The Isolator was yet another Magic Grey Box, containing two Lundahl 1:1 mic/line transformers, with two female XLR inputs and two male XLR outputs. Primarily built for providing an electrically isolated feed from my Nagra V for film and television crews, it often found itself patched into an analogue recording signal path simply to add the wonderfully euphonic warmth and thickness of iron to the sound – great for ‘fixing’ a thin string quartet recording or similar.<br /><br />One of the great things about the Magic Grey Boxes was that they could be interconnected to form all sorts of monitoring and isolating signal paths. I once took the output of a Mackie mic preamp through the Isolator to thicken and warm up the sound, then through The Pot to ride the level before going into a Prism Sound AD124 AD converter for recording. Nice…</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-33906064697447530632009-03-29T10:13:00.014+11:002009-03-29T22:04:40.707+11:00FFW09: Hearing it like it isn’t<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWLOgN-L04MMAUm2jids_IIugsQVAjONZ3M7SZd6rvr6kbqQoDwVsS4MdN4fihWIUpFYZrDOGHcti65BMhDIZEPCiwNJMvcFhUtSDBo__fyt3Vsho9a61EYTa57UWh3SCdMbUlWqQGfwk/s1600-h/issue09cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWLOgN-L04MMAUm2jids_IIugsQVAjONZ3M7SZd6rvr6kbqQoDwVsS4MdN4fihWIUpFYZrDOGHcti65BMhDIZEPCiwNJMvcFhUtSDBo__fyt3Vsho9a61EYTa57UWh3SCdMbUlWqQGfwk/s200/issue09cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318385161616752850" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">In FFW08 I proceeded to tell the entire Australian music industry that its recording and mixing work was below international standards. Hours of exasperating conversations ensued, from which emerged a clearer picture of the problem. It was extremely disheartening to learn that a local record company would spend many times more money getting the same record mixed and/or mastered in the US than they would spend here in Australia. The reasons behind that were equally disheartening; in fact, I chose not to print them at the time (as seen below) because they would do nothing but induce a feeling of futility and helplessness among local engineers. Considering the ill-feeling and potential damage I had caused with FFW08, I chose instead to portray myself as well-meaning but mislead. By publically falling on my own sword I put an end to the matter from my point of view, thereby conveniently short-circuiting the need for me to do any further investigation into it. In other words, putting a lid on it. I did, however, invite others to write in with their own experiences, in the hope that one of the engineers I had spoken to would be willing to ‘out’ the problem in their own words, but no-one took me up on the offer. I guess they felt like I did; damage control!<br /><br />But that was a decade ago when I still had faith in the concept of a local music recording ‘industry’: one in which deep-pocketed record companies were committed to developing local artists to record and release their music. These days, that aspect of the local music recording industry has proven to care more about its deep pockets than anything else, and I personally care less for it than I care for a pocketful of cockroaches and mosquitoes. So, I’m going to put those reasons at the end of this Famous First Word. Enjoy, or whatever…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hearing It Like It Isn’t</span><br />The late, great press critic A.J. Liebling once said: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”. There can be no doubt that having the freedom to publish whatever you want is one of the greatest things about owning a magazine, but as with all forms of freedom, it comes with an implied responsibility…<br /><br />In my last column, ‘Hearing It Like It Is’ [AudioTechnology, Volume 2, Issue 2], I described my disappointment with the sound of Australian recordings that had been mixed and/or mastered locally in comparison to those that were sent overseas. I then went on to explain why I believed our major artists and record companies were sending their work overseas. I did some market statistics, spoke to a couple of A&R people, and even got some ‘insider’ sales figures from a local record company. Essentially, my conclusion was that our local mixing and mastering talent wasn’t capable of delivering an international sound.<br /><br />Before going any further, I would like to offer my sincere apologies to all those people who felt attacked or betrayed by that column – it was not my intention to do any harm to the industry. I took a ‘hard line’ to shake things up a bit, and hopefully encourage some discussion and raise the standard. Judging by the feedback I’ve received, I have achieved those objectives. But my fundamental argument was misinformed and therefore flawed, and may have done more harm than good.<br /><br /> ‘Hearing It Like It Is’ was a follow up to a column published two issues earlier, titled ‘Relativity & The Whispering Chinese Engineer Of The Year’ [AudioTechnology, Volume 1, Issue 6]. Both columns were referring to a specific set of recordings: the ARIA nominations for Engineer Of The Year and Producer Of The Year. No matter how cynical you are about such awards, you cannot ignore the impact they have. Whoever wins such an award can expect an improved income for the following 12 months (if they play their cards right), and may use it as a springboard to a higher profile career. They will contribute significantly to shaping the Australian sound, and their work will be held as a local reference by many of our aspiring young engineers. For those reasons alone, I took these awards very seriously. Hence the disappointment in what I heard – was that the best we could do?<br /><br />The feedback flooded in from the day the magazine hit the streets. The first wave was very positive, mostly congratulating me for bringing this topic into the open. But the second wave knocked me reeling. These were industry professionals: recording engineers, mixing engineers, mastering engineers, producers, and studio owners. They felt angry and betrayed, but to their credit, argued their points rationally and objectively. As many pointed out, my conclusion was sending a very negative message to our local record companies and artists: “don’t get your mixing and mastering done in Australia!” That was not my intention at all (quite the opposite, in fact), and it didn’t take long to see the error of my ways.<br /><br />The flaw in my conclusion was the assumption that Australian artists and record companies were going overseas because our local engineers could not deliver an internationally competitive sound. After discussing this situation with numerous local engineers, I can only say that it was not a valid assumption – which makes the rest of my conclusion bogus.<br /><br />I heard many tales of woe from Australian engineers explaining how they were given ridiculously small budgets to mix albums, only to find the record companies and artists weren’t happy with the finished results. As Daniel Denholm points out, “You can’t clip the wings and then expect it to fly…” [see ‘Your Word’, this issue]. As a result, the work was sent overseas to be remixed, and the record companies spent at least twice the budget they had allocated for local engineers. Of course they got better results!<br /><br />So why are our local record companies and artists willing to spend more on overseas mixing and mastering? Everyone has their own explanations – some plausible, some not. Whatever the reasons may be, there is one thing I am now certain of: if our record companies and artists spent the same amounts of money on local jobs as they did on international jobs, we’d be producing recordings that would be equal to those done overseas, perhaps even better. We have the technology, we have the motivation, and we have the skills. But most importantly, we have something unique to smaller markets – resourcefulness and the willingness to make the most of a less-than-ideal situation. It’s an Australian trait, and we’re famous around the world for it.<br /><br />Which leads me to another flaw in my previous conclusion: I had applied a broad generalisation to the issue, when in reality these things should be discussed on a case-by-case basis. I’d like to follow this up by talking with the appropriate decision-makers for each of the Australian recordings I was referring to in my previous column. But I doubt I’d get meaningful answers… After all, the two A&R people I spoke to as part of my research both gave me the same answer: “It sounds better, it sells better”. What I didn’t know then was that they were using an unfair reference: you can’t compare two different sets of mixes (local and overseas) when the overseas mixes have such larger budgets! And I thought these A&R people knew what they were doing…<br /><br />There are more shortcomings of 'Hearing It Like It Is' worth explaining, but I'm out of space. I'd like to thank all those who contacted me to discuss this issue, and especially those who found the time to write in. I published my conclusion with the freedom of the person who owns the press, and now I feel obliged to turn that freedom over to the industry. If you have something constructive to say about Australian work going overseas, send it in and we'll publish it. But please, keep it short, concise and to the point. In closing, I'd like to draw your attention to this issue's Your Word, where we have published some readers' comments on this topic, and to Last Word, where Rick O'Neil gives me quite a beating. (Next issue, I'm going to talk about equipment…)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Okay, enough of the self-flagellation bullshit. I've always felt bad about not telling what I believed to be the truth behind that situation; this retrospective blog provides the opportunity to right that wrong.<br /><br />In the numerous conversations that took place with local engineers and producers after the publication of FFW08, the following scenario came up again and again. A local engineer was given a budget of, say, $5000, to mix an album for a local artist. With SSL mixing rooms charging around $1000/day in those days, this allowed five days to mix 10 or more songs. In other words, mixing at least two songs per day. The mixes were rushed, of course. Not surprisingly, the local record company didn’t like the sound (what I rightfully described as a ‘demo on steroids’ in FFW08) and would decide to send it to the US to be mixed ‘professionally’. Miraculously, the US mixing engineer was given enough budget to mix one song per day; allowing for exchange rates at the time, that’s about three times as much as the local engineer was given. As each of the local engineers said to me, “If they gave me that much money and time in the first place I could’ve given them a world-class mix”. And I’ve no doubt of that…<br /><br />So why don’t the local record companies spend the big money here in the first place? It’s not about our engineers and it’s not about our studios. It’s about networking and sales.<br /><br />As I pointed out in FFW08, the record buying public in the US is (or was at the time) about 15 times larger than the Australian record buying public. There’s lots of money to be made for an Australian artist who lands a song on the US charts, certainly enough to cover the recording costs and even put some worthwhile money into the artist’s pocket (which is more than can usually be said for landing a song on the charts in Australia, by the way). But there’s little chance of US chart success if the recording is mixed and mastered here in Australia.<br /><br />Consider the following hypotheticals…<br /><br />Situation A: The A&R manager of the local branch of a major record label sends the finished and mastered mixes of his latest pet project to his US counterpart and says, “Hey, check this out, these guys are pretty good, kind of like Guns’N’Roses but with an Aussie accent”. The US A&R person takes a listen, thinks, “Yeah, okay. Apart from the Aussie accent, it sounds like everything else out there. Boring.” He drops it into the marketing machine without a second thought, leaving it to fend for itself.<br /><br />Situation B: The A&R manager of the local branch of a major record label telephones his US counterpart and says, “Hey, I’ve got these artists coming over to do some mixing and mastering in LA. Please pick them up from the airport, show them around town and, you know, just generally take care of them.” A few cocaine lines later and the US guy has developed a relationship with the band; now they become one of</span> his<span style="font-style:italic;"> pet projects. When the album is finished, he’s personally taking it to the marketing department saying, “Hey, check out these guys I’ve been working with. They’re like Guns’N’Rose with an Aussie accent. Look good, too. Awesome!”<br /><br />You don’t have to be a genius to realise which of those situations is going to fly…<br /><br />So when a local record company sends something to the US for mixing and/or mastering, they’re willing to take a bigger financial risk because the US networking gives it a greater chance of making a decent financial return. No wonder all of our more successful artists eventually go to the US to do their entire albums. The networking is as complete as possible and so, therefore, are the chances of success.<br /><br />As I said at the start of this post, it's disheartening stuff, instilling a sense of futility and helplessness into the hearts of those hoping to make it big in Australia.<br /><br />There’s only one conclusion to make from all of this. If you aspire to have a satisfying career as a ‘big fish’ sound engineer working in a music industry where there’s enough money to do things properly, get out of Australia as soon as possible. You’re wasting your time splashing around in this rapidly evaporating little pond.<br /><br />Then again, have you heard the slickly perfected in-one-ear-and-out-the-other dross from the US lately? If you want a satisfying life, consider opening a café instead; the hours are better and people will always appreciate, and pay through the nose for, a good cup of coffee.</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-9911031378003775372009-03-25T20:52:00.019+11:002009-03-26T11:21:34.348+11:00Not a First Word, but highly recommended...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQiqPdNXJDiId-Lk4Zn7A65QZN-lKlwTO-ZLsiy_LsgQtiT75xVCeBDwb0PeMiZqZcFSjJw0MT1pr-6Um-_QHLVM5krQ3CR94eDq-WS_zUa_EF61R6zi39hjONoZl4WoAGTrplO-w9Qg/s1600-h/IMGP1585.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQiqPdNXJDiId-Lk4Zn7A65QZN-lKlwTO-ZLsiy_LsgQtiT75xVCeBDwb0PeMiZqZcFSjJw0MT1pr-6Um-_QHLVM5krQ3CR94eDq-WS_zUa_EF61R6zi39hjONoZl4WoAGTrplO-w9Qg/s320/IMGP1585.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317074038950005794" /></a>Anyone aspiring to work in the music 'industry' is encouraged to read the following pieces. Written by different industry insiders at different times over the past two decades, they collectively trace the decline of the industry itself due to corporate greed... of course.<br /><br />This piece, by engineer/producer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini">Steve Albini</a> (Nirvana et al), is from the early '90s and documents the beginning of the problems:<br /><a href="http://www.negativland.com/albini.html">The Problem With Music</a><br /><br />This piece, written in 2000, is by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_Love">Courtney Love</a>, front-person for the band Hole and wife of Kurt Cobain:<br /><a href="http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html">Courtney Love Does The Math</a><br /><br />This piece, written by musician/activist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mellencamp">John Mellencamp</a> and published on the 22nd of March this year, continues the analysis of the decline:<br /><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mellencamp/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836.html">The State of the Music Business</a><br /><br />Read those pieces and then reflect on this wonderful quote from the late, great, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench; a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side."</span><br /><br />[Thanks to Kim Cascone for links...]Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-49815562245579162582009-03-21T08:37:00.013+11:002009-03-21T10:17:31.347+11:00FFW08: Hearing it like it is<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjruAZjLTwop963U7A1HyPizrf7UCcUIEun_8SbC39rARcTLJr69Y8kshwJQ2a_e1iIN5UkFBhtF9lhhbY0jsO4GZ3jTXYTAsOU0LXcVH3IrUnyw4ux85DAyWwEucS427UAf2lm5LBlp7Y/s1600-h/issue08cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjruAZjLTwop963U7A1HyPizrf7UCcUIEun_8SbC39rARcTLJr69Y8kshwJQ2a_e1iIN5UkFBhtF9lhhbY0jsO4GZ3jTXYTAsOU0LXcVH3IrUnyw4ux85DAyWwEucS427UAf2lm5LBlp7Y/s200/issue08cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315387985072491874" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Hard love… It’s rarely given without controversy, or taken without offense. How do you tell an entire industry that it’s below par? After spending the best part of a week listening to dozens of locally-produced CDs while voting for Engineer Of The Year (13th ARIA awards), I was left with one sadly obvious conclusion: the work of Australian engineers and producers was not up to an international standard. So I wrote about it with the hope of opening dialogue and perhaps even motivating local engineers to push a bit harder. But it didn’t go over too well, as will be seen later… Here's First Word #08, from sometime in late 1999.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hearing it like it is</span><br />A couple of issues ago I discussed my approach to voting for Engineer Of The Year for the 13th Annual ARIA Awards. Now that the awards are over and we’ve enjoyed our moment of self-congratulation, I’d like to air some related dirty laundry. Some of you won’t like what I’m about to say, and some will disagree strongly. I couldn’t care less. This is my magazine, and I’m going to say it like I hear it.<br /><br />As you’d expect, a major part of my voting process involved carefully listening to each nominated recording – a daunting task, considering there were 42 CDs submitted. While listening to each recording, I’d occasionally hear something that sounded truly world class and worthy of an award. Excitedly, I’d scan through the CD’s documentation to find out where it was mixed and mastered. To my disappointment, the vast majority of the recordings I considered world class were in fact mixed and/or mastered by US engineers in major US facilities. (The few exceptions were mixed by local engineers with considerable overseas experience, or ‘immigrant’ engineers who honed their skills overseas before taking up residence in Australia. Most were mastered at Studios 301.) Because the US engineers were not eligible for our awards, the local engineers who tracked the recordings received the nominations by default! Make of that what you will. It’s the numbers that bother me…<br /><br />I was unable to find mixing and/or mastering details for seven of the 42 submitted recordings. Of the remaining 35 recordings, eight were mixed by overseas engineers in overseas studios, and 10 were mastered overseas. Assuming the seven recordings I couldn’t find details for were mixed and mastered locally (a best case scenario), we can safely say that 20% of all nominations were mixed and mastered overseas. That’s one in every five, but it gets worse. That same 20% of recordings included many of our bigger budget mainstream artists for that year, and therefore represented significantly more than 20% of the total recording budget for Australian artists over that time period. Interestingly, they were also the artists who enjoyed the most local chart success during that time period (e.g. Human Nature, Bachelor Girl, Taxiride, etc.)<br /><br />Think about it. Our record companies are sending our big budget artists overseas for mixing and mastering, while many of our smaller budget artists are opting to mix locally but master overseas. Why?<br /><br />Some dismiss it as ego-driven ‘wank factor’, but that’s a serious case of denial. Record companies aren’t stupid – if they weren’t seeing any financial benefit from sending work overseas, they wouldn’t be doing it. The reality is that albums mixed and/or mastered in the USA consistently sound better <span style="font-style:italic;">and</span> sell better than those done locally.<br /><br />Others argue it’s for the overseas technology, but if that were true we’d be sending our local engineers overseas to do the work – the same engineers who track the recordings and are intimately familiar with the artists’ intentions. Besides, we’ve got similar facilities with the same ‘brand name’ equipment here in Australia. Not as many as you’ll find in the USA, and few as glamorous, but certainly enough to service our meagre handful of big budget artists.<br /><br />If it’s not for the wank factor or the technology, could it be for the people overseas? You bet. Witness the speed at which our local record companies and artists form a queue at the studio door whenever an overseas engineer or producer drops in for a working holiday!<br /><br />Has our local industry lost faith in itself? The answer is obvious. As far as our record companies and artists are concerned, Australian engineers are not up to the international standard. Unfortunately, I think they’re right. Anyone who critically listened through all 42 nominated CDs, as I did, will agree that there’s a definite Australian sound. But it’s not a good sound and it’s not a sound to be proud of, either. It’s cheap, dry and two-dimensional, and rarely possesses the polish, sparkle and depth required to make it world class. Most locally mixed and mastered recordings sound like demos on steroids, cheap imitations of the real thing. Why? I’d like to think it all comes down to markets and budgets…<br /><br />Let’s look at some statistics. Australia has a population of 17.8 million people, mostly concentrated around the edges of a country encompassing an area of 7.7 million square kilometres. In contrast, the USA (where the bulk of our overseas mixing and mastering was done) has a population of 273 million people distributed throughout an area of 9.2 million square kilometres. In other words, the US market is potentially 15 times bigger than the Australian market, yet their country is only 1.2 times larger. Assuming an Australian artist produced an internationally competitive recording, they could expect to sell 15 times more CDs in the USA than they’d sell in Australia, for about the same pro rata distribution costs!<br /><br />Is the entire US market too mind-boggling? Let’s scale it down. The state of New York has a population of 18.2 million people distributed throughout an area of 122,309 square kilometres. That’s a population equivalent to all of Australia, but concentrated into an area that is 63 times smaller! The infrastructure to reach all those people is much simpler. How many newspapers and magazines do you need to advertise in? How many radio stations and music video shows do you need to get onto? How many record stores do you need to distribute to, and over what distances? It is cheaper and easier to reach the same number of people in the USA than it is in Australia.<br /><br />No wonder we’re always trying to crack the US market! It is the single largest English speaking market in the world. But the secret is to produce something that holds its own among the dozens of international recordings presented daily to the program directors at the radio stations and music video channels across the USA. If the program directors don’t like the sound of it, it’s not going to get played and you’re not going to reach that huge market. Simple. (The same rationale applies locally, too. Many Australian mixed and mastered recordings stand out like sore thumbs when heard on local radio or video shows. Licensing requirements mean that broadcasters must present a certain percentage of Australian content, otherwise much of it would never be heard at all!)<br /><br />Which leads us to budgets. With the potential for 15 times more sales, recording budgets in the US are understandably higher than they are in Australia. And this, I believe, is the core of the problem. Australian engineers don’t get the necessary studio time to refine their skills and work towards achieving that truly international sound. Australian record companies and artists want their recordings to sound international, so they do whatever’s necessary to add a dash of that truly international flavour – to make them stand out from the rash of locally produced ‘demos on steroids’, and to improve their chances of cracking that huge US market. And that means getting all, or part of it, done in the US. Historically, many of our most successful bands end up making their entire albums overseas, particularly in the USA. As the budget gets lower, the options are to mix and master in the USA, or just to master in the USA. Obviously, our record companies and artists can afford to pay for this type of work, so what can we do to keep that money in our own pockets?<br /><br />We must learn how to create that international sound, and we should start by studying the people who are taking our work. Read their magazine interviews. Visit their websites. Listen carefully to what they produce. Analyse what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. We must learn to think like they think, because that’s where the difference lies.<br /><br />It’s time to break free of the “near enough is good enough” and “she’ll be right” restraints that have obviously become so prevalent in our studios - particularly among our younger generation of engineers. We have to swallow our pride, take a detached and critical listen to what we’re doing, and ask ourselves, “does this sound <span style="font-style:italic;">truly</span> international?” Hear it like it is. Because, at this point in time, we’re obviously not cutting it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The number of emails crowding my In Box left me in no doubt that issue #08 had hit the streets. Most applauded me for bringing the topic into the open. Then the phone calls started - and didn't stop! Angry industry pros were ringing the magazine's office and being deflected to my mobile phone. Most began with a barrage of insults and threats, during which I applied a valuable philosophy I'd learned from Philip Spencer: "it takes two to argue". After letting each person vent their spleen, constructive conversation followed. In most cases the caller reluctantly agreed with my statement that Australian recordings were not up to an international standard, but disagreed with my assumptions and conclusions. From those discussions I wrote the follow-up piece 'Hearing it like it isn't', published in issue #09. Stay tuned...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-3644623042118912532009-03-13T10:36:00.024+11:002009-03-14T10:01:11.338+11:00FFW07: Lessons in coupling & isolation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWs1IVUo34EvDKTlAy4h2QL-aSIOEPC8uA8AIjm7qteDSRUna2vA48QBz9102jra9SGUbdpL2XnRGmnhzJ2GWRotNz6nKG2QJuW63HAdwVaQmX7K7AFcEjEkezIh9KwH6u57SSehdJsOo/s1600-h/issue07cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWs1IVUo34EvDKTlAy4h2QL-aSIOEPC8uA8AIjm7qteDSRUna2vA48QBz9102jra9SGUbdpL2XnRGmnhzJ2GWRotNz6nKG2QJuW63HAdwVaQmX7K7AFcEjEkezIh9KwH6u57SSehdJsOo/s200/issue07cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312454645531360546" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Setting up studio monitors is never as simple as it sounds; not if you want to get the best performance from them. After finding the right positions within the room, you've got to make sure they're properly mounted and isolated. This First Word, written sometime in 1999, discusses simple things you can do to improve the sound of your monitors by paying attention to mounting, coupling and isolation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lessons in coupling and isolation</span><br />“Yikes, those Questeds are making my ATCs sound bad!” I cried. Brad was somewhere behind the console, fossicking for test CDs in a dirty blue milk crate. “Ha!” he laughed, “I dare you to print that!” “No, no,” I explained, “my ATCs don’t sound <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span> when those Questeds are sitting next to them... the low mids have gone all lumpy!”<br /><br />Brad and I had just unpacked the Quested VS2108s and, noting their size, decided to sit them flush beside my ATCs for a quick and easy A/B comparison. But at 34cm wide, the Questeds’ imposing baffles were playing havoc with the dispersion of the considerably slimmer ATCs, coupling the lower frequencies and making them sound dull and ordinary.<br /><br />Interesting? Not really. It’s simple physics, and it’s something that PA operators deal with whenever they stack multiple boxes side by side. But it’s been about 15 years since I stacked a PA system, and acoustic coupling was the last thing on my mind as we lined up the Questeds beside the ATCs.<br /><br />Switching between the ATCs and Questeds showed that neither pair were sounding worthy of their respective price tags. Taking the Questeds off the bench returned the familiar ATC sound. Likewise, removing the ATCs and listening to the Questeds in isolation revealed a much higher level of sound quality, certainly more in line with their reputation.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lesson #1:</span> Never compare monitors in any kind of side-by-side situation. It may seem like a good way to make a direct A/B comparison, but all you’ll actually be testing is how badly each monitor affects the other one. Retailers, take note…<br /><br />Later that week, during an AudioTechnology ‘Spontaneous Human Consumption’ event at Brad’s place, Michael Stavrou spent a critical moment listening to the Questeds, rubbed his chin for another critical moment, then said, “You got any marbles?” “Dunno,” said Brad, “take a look around.” “How about washers?” Stav asked. “Ditto…”<br /><br />You can dig up all kinds of interesting stuff while fossicking around Brad’s place but his marbles and washers were too well hidden, so Stav returned with half a dozen beers. He carefully removed the top from each bottle, and placed three tops under each Quested in a triangular shape (one under each front corner, one half way across the back). The performance increase was obvious to all, and became a hot topic for the next half hour or so. Just long enough for the beers to go flat…<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lesson #2:</span> Lifting a monitor’s bottom off the surface it rests on minimises physical contact, thereby reducing the amount of sound energy being drained out of the monitor and into the surface. This ‘draining’ of energy out of the monitor causes a decrease in performance, but it gets worse: if the surface is not sufficiently well-damped, it will re-radiate that energy back into the room, causing an even further decrease in performance.<br /><br />Brad’s monitor bench is about six feet long, reasonably rigid, and supported at each end. But the Questeds have a large and squarish footprint that provides a good contact area with the bench, and they generate a lot of low frequency energy for their size. Combine these factors with their 22kg weight per box, and you’ve got a powerful source of low frequency energy with a large footprint and considerable mass pressing down onto the bench, allowing an even better draining of energy.<br /><br />Interestingly, my ATCs are designed with three feet fitted in place for this very reason – and never suffered this problem when mounted on Brad’s monitor bench. But why three feet? Why not four or more?<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lesson #3:</span> Proper monitor performance requires stability. Powerful small monitors, such as the ATCs and Questeds, really need to be held stable. If the box wobbles or rocks in any way, it causes loss of output, blurring of the stereo image and smearing of high frequency detail. JBL’s Doug Button discussed this concept, which he calls ‘inertial grounding’, in my review of JBL’s LSR32s [Vol. 1, Iss. 4.]<br /><br />So why three feet? Three points defines a single plane, and therefore offers maximum stability - that’s why microphone stands, camera tripods and my favourite ‘non-rocking’ café tables are all designed to stand on three feet. (Of course, ‘tripod’ literally translates to ‘three feet’. Duh!). Increasing the number of feet beyond three increases the possibility of instability and wobbling - not a good thing for microphones, cameras, steaming hot cappuccinos or studio monitors.<br /><br />While Stav’s beer bottle tops demonstrated the benefits of isolation, they were only a temporary solution. Brad has since replaced them with height-adjustable brass cones designed specifically for decoupling speakers, which are available from your local hi-fi shop. Due to the squarish footprint and weight distribution of the Questeds, he’s using four cones - one under each corner. Being height adjustable, he’s able to fine-tune them for maximum stability. His Questeds are now sounding better than ever.<br /><br />So if your monitors are sitting flush on their bottoms, get some cones under them ASAP! You won’t regret it. But make sure you put the cones the right way around – which is upside down. Their large flat end connects with the bottom of your monitor, while their small pointy end connects with the surface your monitor sits on. When done correctly, your monitors will look like they’re standing on tip toes. (In fact, the first commercially available cones were called ‘Tip Toes’.)<br /><br />So how do the cones work? Physically, their pointed ends provide a solid connection between the monitor and the bench, which keeps the monitor from wobbling. But their small contact area with the bench creates a very high acoustic impedance, the sort of thing that sound energy prefers not to travel through. With the weight of the monitors pressing down on them, the cones are able to firmly anchor the monitors to the bench while simultaneously providing acoustic isolation. Amazing, huh?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I first met Brad Watts during the days of AudioTechnology's miserable predecessor, Sound Australasia. I was looking for a Mac-savvy guy to write a regular Macintosh audio column, and Brad came highly recommended from the people at AudioMedia magazine. We made an appointment to meet in my office at Pacific Publications. While waiting for this 'Brad Watts' to arrive, a feral-looking bicycle courier walks through the Pacific Publications cubicle farm, dreadlocks flowing and talking into the air with some kind of assertive certainty, just like a crazy guy. He stops at the door of my office. "Simmo? I'm Brad Watts, hang on a minute mate". He then proceeds to pace in and out of my office door while finishing the phone call taking place on his hands-free kit; obviously helping someone get their Mac working again. It was the first time I'd seen someone using a hands-free kit in such a brazen and open manner. It was also the first time I ever saw Brad Watts.<br /><br />Two years later Philip Spencer and I saunter out of an important meeting that secured the future of our yet-to-be-published magazine. It’s a beautiful Sydney day and we’re feeling as good as the weather, so we stop at Mo’s, the outdoor café belonging to the Museum of Sydney, for a celebratory drink. The attentive waitress is buzzing around wiping tables and keeping us well stocked with refreshments.<br />“By the way, my name’s Jackie. What are you guys celebrating?”<br />“We’ve just launched our new magazine, called AudioTechnology. It’s about sound recording equipment.”<br />“Really? My boyfriend writes about that kind of stuff. Maybe he could write for you…”<br />“What’s his name?”<br />“Watts </span><a href="http://simmosonic.googlepages.com/twilightzone.m3u">is</a><span style="font-style:italic;"> his name! Brad Watts, actually.”<br />“He’s in our first issue…”<br /><br />Fast forward a few more years and I find myself sharing a warehouse conversion at the top of Hibernian House, Surry Hills, with newly-weds Brad and Jackie Watts. Crazy and intense days, in retrospect, littered with marine aquariums, astroturf, huge televisions and way too many fried chicken wings from the Thai takeaway down stairs. But we had a lot of fun. We both had our own studio rooms; Brad with the Quested VS2108s mentioned above (which he promptly bought after the review) and me with my ATCs. Between us, there was probably not a single piece of audio gear on the planet that we could not review the heck out of.<br /><br />Brad's</span> Mac Notes<span style="font-style:italic;"> column has been a regular fixture in AudioTechnology since the first issue, along with his prolific product reviews. He's probably the smartest Mac audio guy on the planet. A year or two ago he became a full-time employee of AudioTechnology, a position he well deserved. To be honest, I don't know where the magazine would be without him...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-14992454198901397932009-03-08T07:16:00.009+11:002009-03-08T08:01:39.593+11:00FFW06: Relativity & the whispering Chinese engineer of the year<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGU_rO-_7y4fATfHSBN3WBBfRbmTylgGq0D98Y1pzmpV16VoiOlSNqPAxvciuTsbio5akKNGsPBP4w1WvxukV5w3hKEmzfB1ISm_Wo8lr9vK8WvsLzPzgLLf-de2Y0dM5cVxUKJ-9844U/s1600-h/issue06cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGU_rO-_7y4fATfHSBN3WBBfRbmTylgGq0D98Y1pzmpV16VoiOlSNqPAxvciuTsbio5akKNGsPBP4w1WvxukV5w3hKEmzfB1ISm_Wo8lr9vK8WvsLzPzgLLf-de2Y0dM5cVxUKJ-9844U/s200/issue06cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310543957983874626" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">In mid 1999 I was invited to be a judge for the categories of Engineer of the Year and Producer of the Year for the ARIA Awards (Australian Recording Industry Association). These are very important awards within the small Australian music industry, so I took this invitation seriously. The winners can look forward to regular work for the coming 12 months or so if they play their cards right.<br /><br />Chinese Whispers is a game where a message is passed from one person to another by word of mouth; typically by whispering so that no-one else can hear it. After passing through five or more people, the message delivered at the end is quite different to that at the beginning.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Relativity & the whispering Chinese engineer of the year</span><br />Wednesday, 8th June, 1999. 10:30AM. The following telephone conversation takes place:<br /><br />Philip: “Hi Greg. There’s a letter here for you from ARIA.”<br />Greg: “What’s it say?”<br /><br />Philip: “Um, something about voting and Engineer and Producer Of The Year. You’ve been selected…”<br /><br />Greg: “Oh, cool! ARIA’s Engineer and Producer of the Year awards, huh? I accept!”<br /><br />Philip: “Okay, gotta go, got some clients here at the office, we’re designing ads for them.”<br /><br />Greg: “Thanks mate, see you later…”<br /><br />I was taking a break from giving a lecture at Sydney’s JMC Academy, and some of the students in the room must have overheard my side of the conversation. Likewise, the clients back in the office must have overheard Philip’s side of the conversation. Well, word spreads quickly in a small industry, and this was no exception. Like a game of Chinese Whispers, the message got more and more distorted until I started getting congratulated for winning all kinds of things.<br /><br />Let me put an end to this rumour right now. I was <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> nominated for Engineer Of The Year, I was <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> nominated for Producer Of The Year, and I was <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> nominated for anything else – much to my regret! The letter was, in fact, an invitation to vote for the categories of Producer Of The Year and Engineer Of The Year for the 13th Annual ARIA Music Awards. I was flattered.<br /><br />Here’s how the voting system works. ARIA send out forms with all the preliminary nominations listed on them (approximately 30 entries for each category). Each preliminary nomination includes the name of the engineer or producer and the recordings to judge them by. It’s a preferential voting system in which you list your top three candidates – in order of preference – on the supplied voting form and send it off to an independent auditing firm who tally up the scores. Immaculate procedure!<br /><br />I don’t know how or why ARIA chose me to be part of their ‘Specialist Voting Panel’. Perhaps because I’m always preaching sound quality in the pages of AudioTechnology, perhaps in recognition of the support we gave them during their fight against the Parallel Imports bill, or perhaps because someone else dobbed me in. Either way, I considered it an honour. But with that honour came a certain responsibility, and the more I thought about it, the heavier that responsibility became. How do you determine who should be awarded Engineer or Producer Of The Year? What criteria do you use? It’s not as simple as it seems.<br /><br />Consider the category of Engineer Of The Year. Scanning the list of preliminary nominations revealed a decent cross-section of recordings to judge by, from big budget mainstream artists to low budget ‘indie’ artists. And therein lay my first problem. A big budget recording, by its very nature, is likely to have a better overall sound quality than a low budget recording. Bigger budgets mean more time and better equipment at your disposal – both important contributors to creating a good sound. So, a low budget recording that sounds ‘just okay’ may actually represent better engineering skill than a big budget recording that sounds ‘brilliant’. It’s all relative.<br /><br />Big budget recording artists usually have better quality instruments and a lot more studio experience under their belts - more factors that make it easier to get a good sound. Conversely, lower budget recording artists generally have less studio experience, cheaper musical instruments, and greater time constraints. All these things conspire against getting a good sound, and make the engineer’s job that much harder. Getting a commercially acceptable sound under these circumstances requires an enormous amount of engineering skill. Once again, it’s all relative. (And we haven’t even touched on the benefits of big budget mastering…)<br /><br />Then I thought about what goes on during a session. Without being there, how can you really tell who was a good engineer and who wasn’t? Engineering involves much more than just getting a great sound. It’s also about handling the numerous stresses of a session, internalising your own frustrations while outwardly projecting a positive vibe, and continually applying the right psychology – all with the aim of extracting the best performance from the artist. Without a good performance, a great sound is meaningless.<br /><br />There’s also the style of music to consider, and its context. Some styles lend themselves far more readily to good sound than others. For example, a female vocalist crooning love songs is likely to sound better than a thrash guitar band screaming angst! Yet, each one has to be considered in the context of the market it is aimed at, and how well the recording meets that market’s expectations.<br /><br />Each nominated engineer’s level of involvement also had to be taken into account. While some engineers tracked, mixed and produced the complete recording, others were only credited for tracking (the mixing was invariably credited to an international engineer or producer). How do you judge an engineer who was not credited for mixing, or whose only engineering credits are shared with a handful of US-based engineers?<br /><br />Finally, I thought long and hard about what it meant to be voted Engineer Of The Year. In a small market like Australia it probably means you’ve got a guaranteed income for the next 12 months. And if you’re smart you’ll choose your clients wisely, aiming to firmly establish your reputation as a ‘hit maker’ (or whatever you want to be) so the work doesn’t suddenly dry up when the next Engineer Of The Year is announced.<br /><br />Considering all these points, I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of judging Engineer Of The Year purely on the basis of recorded sound quality. So, for each preliminary nomination, I also considered: 1) the facilities used for recording, mixing and mastering; 2) the engineer’s studio experience and history; 3) the artist’s studio experience and history; 4) the engineer’s level of involvement; and 5) how well the recording met the market’s expectations. I applied a similar thought process when voting for Producer Of The Year.<br /><br />After many hours researching and listening to the nominated recordings, and considering all the other factors listed herein, I think I made the right decisions. I don’t know who the other members of the Specialist Voting Panel are or what methods they used to choose their preferences, but I’ll be thrilled if I’ve managed to pick a winner or two. Either way, I’m convinced I took the best and fairest approach I possibly could.<br /><br />What would you do?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">In the following years I became increasingly disillusioned with the voting process for these awards, as later First Words will show...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-35182722312083756182009-03-05T18:31:00.011+11:002009-03-06T09:03:47.919+11:00Rupert Neve interview<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKOZcz2k4TiW-a6Fdbdt7f0LExywEaLPbA_v2ofRlEnbyu_jYllLcnnlptME0QBhNhPa58vOqrJlBV0xK06jp3QWQMGgh0aJgzoCu7FKufM5OdPDIn4F8wAcSuS2ZSC3v9v0vDRIpkpbs/s1600-h/RUPERT3+3.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 143px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKOZcz2k4TiW-a6Fdbdt7f0LExywEaLPbA_v2ofRlEnbyu_jYllLcnnlptME0QBhNhPa58vOqrJlBV0xK06jp3QWQMGgh0aJgzoCu7FKufM5OdPDIn4F8wAcSuS2ZSC3v9v0vDRIpkpbs/s200/RUPERT3+3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309604174976493122" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">This Rupert Neve interview was published throughout 1998 in the first three issues of AudioTechnology, and not long after in AudioMedia US and AudioMedia UK. If I had a dollar for every time that someone has asked me for a copy of it since then, I'd probably have about $50. That's not a lot of money, but it's a lot of emails with attachments! So I have posted all three parts of the interview on line. See the 'Downloads' section...<br /><br />The following was written for issue 50; the guys were planning a retrospective celebration of the first 50 issues and asked me to write something historical from the founding editor's point of view.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">An infinitely recurring echo from a warm and distant past…</span><br />“How about an interview with Rupert Neve?” It was late ’97, and the enthusiastic voice on the end of the phone was Frank Hinton of ATT Audio Controls. Frank was the Australian representative for Amek, the highly regarded British console manufacturer. We were discussing a review of Amek’s PurePath products for the premiere issue of AudioTechnology, and Frank thought it would be a good idea to include an interview with PurePath’s designer, Mr Rupert Neve.<br /><br />It seems crazy now, but I was lukewarm to the idea. I was carrying in my head the entire editorial vision for this new magazine, AudioTechnology, and had already mapped out the content of the first issue – right down to the words on each page. Accompanying the PurePath review with an interview, no matter how small, meant more space would be required, and that was likely to send a ripple of layout changes through the following pages of the magazine. That’s a nightmare that only publishers and magazine editors will readily appreciate…<br /><br />Furthermore (and I feel terrible for admitting this), I didn’t think the name ‘Rupert Neve’ was particularly newsworthy <span style="font-style:italic;">at the time</span>. It didn’t stack up against the exciting things I had planned for the first issue, such as our scoop in-depth preview of Paris (RIP), the eagerly-anticipated digital audio workstation from Ensoniq (RIP), and the accompanying interview with its designer, Stephen St Croix (RIP). This was hot ‘front cover’ news, whereas the name ‘Rupert Neve’ was perennial… an infinitely recurring echo from a warm and distant past.<br /><br />Nonetheless, what old school audio guy in his right mind would turn down a chance to talk with Rupert Neve? I resolved to somehow lever a half-page or thereabouts into the review, so while Frank arranged a date and time, I studied the PurePath promotional literature and jotted down half a dozen questions.<br /><br />When the time arrived, I attached the business end of my telephone pick-up to the handset, plugged it into my Sony WM-D6C ProWalkman cassette recorder, and dialled the number. Somewhere in Wimberley, Texas, an English gentleman was waiting patiently by the phone. “Hello? Can I speak to Rupert Neve please?” The voice on the other end sounded like an older, wiser and far more secure Hugh Grant, and was immediately at-ease and welcoming. “This is Rupert...”<br /><br />After exchanging formalities, we got down to business… and my brief little six-question 20-minute interview went on for two fascinating hours, covering every imaginable aspect of audio equipment history, design and application. Rupert was happy to talk for as long as I was happy to listen, and I didn’t give a hoot about the international phone call charge because his words were priceless. In fact, the conversation never reached a logical conclusion; I decided to wind it up when it occurred to me that, being a true English gentleman, Rupert was unlikely to tell me to get off his phone and leave him alone.<br /><br />I did not sleep that night. I sat up for hours, playing the interview over and over again, transcribing it into Microsoft Word and excitedly pacing back and forth across my small home office. On tape were some of the most interesting and reassuring insights into professional audio I’d ever heard. I knew I had to include a full-length interview with Rupert Neve in our first issue. So much for my precious editorial ‘vision’!<br /><br />The transcribed text contained over 12,000 words, but we could only fit 3000 words into a feature interview. It was all equally good and important information, and I found it difficult to delete anything. So I sent copies to 10 of the smartest audio guys I knew, along with a cover note saying, “Please highlight the most important parts and return ASAP”. The response was unanimous: “It’s all important!” So I decided to publish the interview as a series through the first three issues of AudioTechnology.<br /><br />Our first issue was a resounding success with all levels of the audio industry in Australia, and the Rupert Neve interview was a major contributor to that success – especially with the cynical and hardened professional engineers who were expecting yet another ill-informed, over-hyped and advertiser-driven piece of garbage aimed squarely at the project studio market. Rupert Neve was also happy; the prestigious AudioMedia magazine bought the interview from us and published it over multiple issues of their US and UK editions, re-kindling world-wide interest in Rupert’s uncompromising philosophies and audio designs.<br /><br />Rupert began writing a regular column for AudioTechnology (which I predictably labelled Rupert’s Word) providing in-depth discussions of noise and distortion and the tonality of audio equipment, supported by graphs, tables of measurements, and anecdotes from his own considerable experience. It further established AudioTechnology’s professional credibility. But despite the intrinsic value of this information, Rupert refused to accept any payment. (Rupert’s Word was short-lived because he got too busy to keep doing it – a problem I am sure he was glad to have!)<br /><br />With each new issue of AudioTechnology I am reminded of Rupert Neve and his selfless contribution to our early success. We’ve only done 50 issues so far, but I hope that the name ‘AudioTechnology’ will eventually become as perennial as ‘Rupert Neve’ – an infinitely recurring echo from a warm and distant past.Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-88243518621262199302009-02-28T19:46:00.025+11:002009-03-15T06:18:08.985+11:00FFW05: Choosing monitors<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuvWtGU5Kj59x_x689wcw1B9JuuSrFfqdmYRd9PZ-fZqmDkRxMZlTgVTRcYXeTLq97FuuPubf51K0sMndBuSJ87wN5d0fLMfRwUHl-ph7ZBEtW8PG36KZW4rze2f52WVOzkItRmFlQhkk/s1600-h/issue05cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuvWtGU5Kj59x_x689wcw1B9JuuSrFfqdmYRd9PZ-fZqmDkRxMZlTgVTRcYXeTLq97FuuPubf51K0sMndBuSJ87wN5d0fLMfRwUHl-ph7ZBEtW8PG36KZW4rze2f52WVOzkItRmFlQhkk/s200/issue05cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309220376290990930" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">As I learnt more about sound engineering and got over the pathetic obsession with knob-twiddling and plug-in piddling that afflicts most engineers, I realised that the most important parts to get right were those that involved the interface with air: microphones and studio monitors. Although the correct placement of either may seem mysterious, its foundation lies in physics and there's really no mystery at all. More about that later...<br /><br />This First Word, written in early 1999, offers simple advice for choosing studio monitors. A companion piece was published as First Word in AudioTechnology #07, and includes practical advice for setting up studio monitors (see 'FFW07: Lessons in coupling & isolation'). This stuff will always be relevant, although my recommendations of reference recordings may require updating...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Choosing Monitors</span><br />For our previous issue I took on the task of reviewing a pair of JBL’s new LSR32 studio monitors. I say ‘task’ because the review that appeared in the magazine was one of numerous versions I’d written in my attempts to explain precisely how good those monitors sounded, and who they would appeal to.<br /><br />Reviewing monitors can be difficult, but deciding which monitors to buy is even harder. Magazine reviews can be helpful but they’re ultimately someone else’s opinion. Choosing the right monitors is like choosing prescription lenses without the help of an optometrist – the monitors that bring <span style="font-style:italic;">my</span> hearing into focus may not work for you. So where do you start? Try the following approach:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">(1) References</span><br />To test the overall accuracy and fidelity of monitors, you need a recording that contains nothing but real acoustic instruments recorded in real acoustic spaces, with no EQ or processing. A good pair of monitors will reproduce those instruments with a lifelike reality, from the attack of a xylophone to the end of a natural reverb tail. For this, you can’t go past a minimalist direct-to-stereo recording from a high fidelity audiophile label. I recommend <span style="font-style:italic;">The Ultimate Demonstration Disc</span> from Chesky Records because it contains some truly excellent acoustic recordings, each highlighting a particular aspect of high fidelity performance, and each accompanied by a narrator explaining what to listen for - a real education and a great tune-up for your ears. (Don’t confuse this disc with <span style="font-style:italic;">The Ultimate Test CD</span> from Essex Entertainment Inc., which is not recommended.)<br /><br />While it’s important for a monitor to provide good high fidelity performance, you’ll also need to establish how it performs in a close-miked multitrack recording situation. Can it handle the repetitive ‘thud thud thud’ of a kick drum in solo mode? Or the challenging uncompressed attack of a raw snare? For those day-to-day studio sounds, it’s hard to go past Alan Parsons’ and Steven Court’s excellent <span style="font-style:italic;">Soundcheck 2</span> CD, which contains everything from drums and guitars through to strings and woodwinds; all recorded by one of the world’s leading sound engineers without any EQ or processing. Close-miked sound doesn’t get much better than this! <span style="font-style:italic;">Soundcheck 2</span> also contains numerous test and alignment tones and, like <span style="font-style:italic;">The Ultimate Demonstration Disc</span>, has great educational value. (With a score of four, <span style="font-style:italic;">Soundcheck</span> tops my list of ‘most stolen CDs’. Don’t leave it lying around when other engineers and recording musicians are present.)<br /><br />For a personal context, you’ll need a well-recorded disc of the style of music you prefer to work with. Something recorded and mixed in a major studio by a top engineer, with good production values, is the requirement here. Every musical genre has a handful of top acts who use the best engineers in the best studios, and sometimes they release an album that is both musically and technically satisfying. That’s the kind of recording you’re after. For example: Quincy Jones’ <span style="font-style:italic;">Q’s Jook Joint</span> (R&B/vocals); Metallica’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Black Album</span> (heavy metal/rock); Yello’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Flag</span> (electronic/dance); Garth Brooks’ <span style="font-style:italic;">Sevens</span> (country/western); James Horner’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Glory</span> (orchestral/film score).<br /><br />Finally, you might want to take along a disc of something you’ve recorded and mixed, but <span style="font-style:italic;">only</span> if you can be objective about it. If you’re a well-established engineer with numerous albums under your belt, that shouldn’t be a problem. But if you’ve spent less than 10 hours of your life listening to a professional mastering engineer telling you what’s wrong with your mixes, then you may find it hard to be objective. So if your recording sounds like crap while the others sound great, don’t blame the monitors. In fact, monitors that highlight the differences between your recordings and others are definitely worth considering.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">(2) Familiarisation</span><br />Before auditioning any monitors you need to totally familiarise yourself with your reference discs, and the best way to do that is to carefully listen to them through headphones. I don’t advocate using headphones for mixing because they over-exaggerate the small details in a recording, but that’s exactly why they’re good for this process. Once you learn where those all-important little details exist in your reference discs – and what they sound like – you’ll find them much easier to focus on when listening without headphones. That’s a powerful skill for judging a monitors’ low level resolution and accuracy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">(3) Room Effect</span><br />You need to understand that no matter how good a pair of studio monitors are, the acoustics of the room itself will have a major impact on the sound you hear from them. For example, a good pair of monitors should have a ‘flat’ frequency response (±2dB or less) throughout their usable range, yet the room’s acoustic behaviour can cause deviations exceeding ±18dB! These effects vary depending on the dimensions and materials of the room itself, the locations of the monitors within the room, and your listening position. By the way, the notion that near-field monitoring overcomes these room problems is comforting but not totally correct.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">(4) Use Before You Choose</span><br />People often choose studio monitors as if they’re choosing speakers for their hi-fi system, by playing some favourite CDs and buying the pair that sounds best. That approach overlooks one of the fundamental requirements of studio monitors, which is to monitor and mix. Before choosing a pair of monitors, you need to spend time recording and mixing on them, and playing those mixes through various systems to see how they translate to the real world. Remember, the goal is to find the monitors that work best in your <span style="font-style:italic;">studio</span>, not necessarily in your hi-fi system. You also need to find out whether you can listen to a pair of monitors for extended time periods without suffering hearing fatigue.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Shooting it out…</span><br />Make a list of the monitors in your price range, find out where you can audition them, and book a quiet time to do so. Using your reference discs, make a shortlist of the monitors you prefer. Now, considering points (3) and (4), you need to get the shortlisted monitors into your studio before you can make a final decision. You need to experiment to find the right placement in your room, and you need to do some complete sessions on them. This is a crucial and unavoidable fact of buying monitors, and something that every responsible salesperson understands. You may have to pay a security deposit, but, whatever you do, don’t buy a pair of monitors until you’ve tried them in your studio.<br /><br />For more monitoring information, see Michael Stavrou’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Mid Tuning Your Loudspeakers</span> and my <span style="font-style:italic;">Strategic Monitoring</span>, both in AudioTechnology #01. Remember that the right pair of monitors is the single most important and long-lasting investment in your sound recording future. So be methodical, avoid impulses, and listen carefully.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The closing paragraph of this First Word mentions Michael Stavrou, otherwise known as 'Stav'. He's somewhat of an engineering legend - in Australia, at least - and is also the brains behind the Smart AV console. I had always admired Stav's engineering abilities and insights, and wanted to include an interview with him in our premiere issue. I visited him in studios and I visited him at home, all the time snapping pics and keeping my Sony ProWalkman in record mode in the hope of capturing some pearls of wisdom. But they just weren't forthcoming; although being highly obliging, he seemed reluctant to talk and the interview was going nowhere. Eventually he confessed that he didn't want to give too much away in an interview because he was planning on writing a book. I suggested that writing a regular column for the magazine would be a good way to get the book started: it would force him to write a regular installment every two months, it would prime readers for his forthcoming book, and the columns themselves could be considered as first drafts for the book. Fortunately he agreed, and thus was born the regular column Stav's Word - a wonderful part of AudioTechnology, full of great advice and unusual ways of thinking about sound engineering. Stav published his book, Mixing With Your Mind, a few years ago, and it has been a hot seller ever since. And it all started with a frustrated attempt at an interview...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-50989002544867484522009-02-28T18:43:00.021+11:002009-03-04T18:33:53.998+11:00FFW04: Preset Mentalities & The Children Of The Revolution<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJrtgwgxeeVyyXfcoh16vmJXFFaZZxoMpc1lpYHcANW3zem95wVTYOfEqB8GpxiJf3-XPFSKykdnB_VtOFmCQQV21ghHKwtcCxavG0bjx477RcYOBt2H4x7mn2CamfCp-O__MaXh_on6g/s1600-h/issue04cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJrtgwgxeeVyyXfcoh16vmJXFFaZZxoMpc1lpYHcANW3zem95wVTYOfEqB8GpxiJf3-XPFSKykdnB_VtOFmCQQV21ghHKwtcCxavG0bjx477RcYOBt2H4x7mn2CamfCp-O__MaXh_on6g/s200/issue04cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308523459113395330" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">Presets... I've always hated them. Preset synth sounds, preset effects settings, preset templates for recording, mixing and/or mastering. They might make it easier to use stuff, but they also destroy any need to understand the tools at hand and thereby discourage original thinking, original application and, ultimately, original music. Here's First Word #04, from early 1999...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Preset Mentalities & The Children Of The Revolution</span><br />As issue three of AudioTechnology went on sale, Chris Holder and I found ourselves at Q Studios, where a beaming Richard Meucke was showing off their brand new G+ SSL console and generally looking extremely pleased with himself. After much perserverance, Q Studios – formerly Rhinoceros Recorders – had finally been restored to its former glory as one of Australia’s most prestigious tracking and mixing studios, and one of the largest facilities in the Southern Hemisphere.<br /><br />So there we were, Chris, myself and a handful of local engineers, producers and studio managers, all getting the royal tour. But that wasn’t the only reason we were there. Quantegy (the tape manufacturer formerly known as Ampex) had released a brand new tape formulation – GP9 Grand Master Platinum – and were using Q Studios to introduce it to the local industry. Double whammy!<br /><br />GP9 grew from Quantegy’s acquisition of the 3M company; a hybrid, if you like, with the best of Quantegy’s and 3M’s tape technologies all rolled into one reel. To demonstrate this new tape, Quantegy had collected an excellent group of musicians and enlisted Simon Leadley to do the engineering. Quantegy’s Dave Williams had devised a very clever tape splicing, biasing and switching scheme that allowed different tape formulations to be compared against each other and against the live performance without changing reels or re-aligning the recorder. Other tapes used in the comparison included Quantegy’s 499 and 456, and BASF’s 990.<br /><br />In my opinion, the GP9 was clearly in a new league and undoubtedly the most high resolution and true-to-life of all the tapes, doing an especially good job of reproducing the important low mid harmonics on kick drums, bass guitars and the lower registers of male vocals. It was also a hands-down winner when recording difficult sounds like hi-hats and sibilants, and made the good old 499 and 456 formulations sound more old than good. 3M’s technologies had certainly injected new blood into Quantegy, and allowed them to go beyond what either company was capable of doing on their own. A true synergy.<br /><br />Eventually, we started talking about which tape we’d prefer. “Well, they all have different tonal characters,” said Chris, “and I’d probably choose the tape that best suits the style of music I’d be recording.” “Right”, said Simon Leadley, “tape becomes just like presets…”<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Oh oh, someone said the ‘P’ word.</span> If there’s one thing I detest about recording and music technology, it’s presets. In the tape context that Simon was using, the concept of presets is absolutely acceptable. Each tape sounds noticeably different and, apart from tape speed and recording level, there are no parameters to adjust once the machine is properly aligned and calibrated. But what about synths, samplers, effects processors and digital consoles? All of these products have dozens of user-adjustable parameters, but they are not always easy to understand, and that means less sales. Rather than focusing on better user-interfaces that educate the users on what the parameters do and how to use them (e.g. Apple’s ‘Balloon Help’ system), manufacturers take the easy way out by piling in the presets. After all, you’re more likely to buy something that gives you instant results on the showroom floor…<br /><br />Now, let’s be fair to the manufacturers. Their user manuals often go to great lengths explaining the fundamentals of a product and what each parameter does. But when you’ve got a pile of presets allowing you to get up and going straight away, who’s going to read the manual? And let’s be fair to presets. They do provide a great way to land in the ball park – an effect preset called ‘snare reverb’ may be a good starting place for creating a unique snare reverb to suit the mix. But how many people are using them that way? Very few, I’m afraid.<br /><br />In the late ‘70s, Teac introduced the affordable tape recorders and mixers that spawned the Home Recording Revolution. I was playing with analogue synthesisers at the time, particularly Roland’s System 100M. This was a totally modular synth which required plugging in a handful of patch leads before you’d hear anything that resembled a musical sound. There were dozens of parameters, but no memories and no presets. To make a useful sound you had to understand the theory behind subtractive synthesis, and that provided a great background for understanding how different sounds worked together. For me, every new sound was a unique sonic event, hand-crafted from raw materials and never to be repeated. My goal was to create unique and individual sounds that held the listener’s interest while fitting perfectly into the mix.<br /><br />Teac’s Home Recording Revolution let me carry that thinking into studio and live sound engineering situations. After choosing the right microphone, each instrument would be given its own individual EQ and effect settings, which no other sound shared, and which were designed to make it unique and interesting while also fitting into the mix. That approach has remained with me to this day. In fact, I believe it to be one of the secrets behind achieving separation and clarity in a complex mix.<br /><br />Many other manufacturers spurred on the Home Recording Revolution, and, as the equipment got better, we saw the emergence of the Project Studio in the mid ‘80s. Even then, most equipment users had a background in sound manipulation and understood what all the parameters were for. <br /><br />But as we approach the next millennium, even the most affordable recording and music technology has become very complex, with hundreds of powerful parameters hidden behind menus full of simple presets. There’s a new generation of users who have only ever been exposed to this kind of technology. They are not encouraged to learn what all the parameters are for, and therefore they learn nothing about the art of sound manipulation.<br /><br />These are The Children Of The Revolution, and their approach to sound engineering is one of hunting and pecking – just like shopping in a supermarket. Rather than learning how to program a synth or tackling the fundamentals of equalisation and effects, this ‘preset mentality’ encourages them to step through hundreds of presets in a process of elimination, trying to find the one that best fits the application. It’s time consuming, boring, and a great detriment to the creative process. And quite often the chosen preset is, in reality, the best of a bad lot.<br /><br />Some years ago I reviewed one of the first affordable digital consoles, and was rather dismayed when I scrolled through the EQ library and saw a handful of guitar EQ presets, all set up and ready to go. I’m not doubting the benefit in being able to save an EQ setting and recall it later, as there are many applications where this is very useful. But to provide a bunch of preset EQs worries me. Any professional engineer worth their salt knows there can be no such thing as the perfect guitar EQ preset, in the same way that there is no such thing as the perfect vocal microphone or the universally applicable snare reverb. It all depends on the individual instrument, how it is played, and the way it fits into the mix. One size does not fit all, nor should it! But The Children Of The Revolution know no better, and blindly reach for the ‘rock guitar’ preset. As a result, all their guitar recordings have the same tonality. While artists are striving for originality, technology is encouraging similarity. Had a listen to the charts lately?<br /><br />The preset mentality is destroying creativity. In their attempts to make things simpler to use, manufacturers are inadvertantly ‘dumbing’ their users and leaving The Children Of The Revolution with no voice of their own. So please, let’s pull the art of sound engineering out of the supermarket and put it back into the studio, where it belongs. Learn what the parameters of your equipment do, and use your presets as starting points only. Your work will be better for it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">AudioTechnology #04 remains an interesting issue to me for a couple of reasons. Most notably, it contained the first instalment of Rupert's Word, a short-lived column that Rupert Neve wrote to follow his interview (in this issue he discussed harmonic distortion). It also contained my review of JBL's LSR32s - the first JBLs I ever liked, and damn fine monitoring speakers too. I was so impressed that I interviewed one of the LSR32's designers, Doug Button. What he said made sense...</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-19341385875239086922009-02-28T17:42:00.016+11:002009-03-02T20:40:17.546+11:00FFW03: Level headed<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHwhZSf0soQYBnRBydbqLmorkSktElxQGsM0Z7rGBvaoBCwhN23GsJ8nBDSDecaU0RrVPtfHZ26hSYCfzKrcJQNW6KB_asxZp39CvMr2Kk_9tsqkOy3KRVfFE3Wq22XoXO4uAihPEzhik/s1600-h/issue03cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHwhZSf0soQYBnRBydbqLmorkSktElxQGsM0Z7rGBvaoBCwhN23GsJ8nBDSDecaU0RrVPtfHZ26hSYCfzKrcJQNW6KB_asxZp39CvMr2Kk_9tsqkOy3KRVfFE3Wq22XoXO4uAihPEzhik/s200/issue03cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308522200320390802" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">It's late 1998... popular music is getting increasingly louder and I'm feeling increasingly exasperated. I gave up listening to commercial radio years earlier due to the excessive amount of processing used to make it loud, and now commercial CDs are sounding just like commercial radio - continually loud and in-your-face, with no contrast, no room to breathe, and no space to appreciate the little things that make music great.<br /><br />The saddest part about this time in history was that recording technology had advanced to a point where we could have all the dynamic range imaginable - more than could be reproduced through an analogue playback system, in fact - and yet sound engineering had 'advanced' to a point where it wanted virtually none of it. The Loudness War, as it came to be known, was in full swing. Since then, loudness has triumphed and sound quality appears to be lost forever - at least in commercial music. But like a beacon of hope, the third and final part of my interview with Rupert Neve, published in this issue, closed on an uplifting and reassuring note. As long as designers like Mr Neve are around, there's still hope for quality audio!<br /><br />Here's First Word #03...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Level headed</span><br />“Not more Chesky!” cried Philip Spencer, AudioTechnology’s sales director, as I tossed a new set of discs in front of him. “Chesky! Chesky! Chesky! It’s all you ever listen to. You’d think they were the only record label in the world!”. “Well,” I said defensively, “they <span style="font-style:italic;">are</span> one of the only labels releasing 24-bit 96k recordings on DVD…” I could see I’d gotten his attention. “You, er, want to hear some?” “Yeah, right, with what?” He cautiously surveyed the room, then fixed a triumphant stare on me. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a DVD player…” Moments later, Sony Australia’s Peter Norman waltzed through the door with his usual boyish grin. “Hi Greg, here’s that DVD player you wanted to borrow.” While Peter and I got in each other’s way setting up the DVD player, Philip reluctantly tore the shrink wrap off the discs while muttering something about doing some real work. “But Philip, this <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> work”, I taunted.<br /><br />Peter had brought in a Sony DVP-S715 DVD player, which plays DVDs, CDs and Video CDs. It’s a fine sounding machine, with a good solid drawer, a well-appointed remote control and, most importantly, 24-bit 96k converters. It’s one of a select number of DVD players capable of playing 24-bit 96k audio, and we were about to hear this emerging format ourselves for the first time.<br /><br />The source material was Chesky Record’s excellent <span style="font-style:italic;">Super Audio Collection & Professional Test Disc</span>. Along with some very useful test tones, Chesky have compiled a selection of their 24-bit 96k recordings onto the DVD Movie format disc, which supports two channels of 24-bit 96k audio. These are master recordings of tracks that have previously been released on Chesky CDs, so it’s easy to do a direct comparison between 16-bit 44.1k and 24-bit 96k versions of the same recording. Which is exactly what we did.<br /><br />So what does this new 24-bit 96k format sound like? Personally, I think it’s stunning. It’s not a radical difference from 16-bit 44.1k, but it’s the right difference. If human perception has a quality threshold – a minimum level of sonic quality required for things to sound natural and real – then 16-bit 44.1k audio falls below that threshold, while 24-bit 96k clearly exceeds it.<br /><br />One of the standout tracks on the Chesky DVD is an acoustic cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’, performed by Livingston Taylor. This beautiful recording takes full advantage of the 24-bit 96k technology’s wider dynamic range, higher resolution and extended frequency response. The CD version is noticeably lack-lustre when compared to the DVD, yet, as far as CD quality is concerned, it’s still a standout recording. Which brings me to the point of this editorial: <span style="font-style:italic;">dynamic range</span>. It’s the wonderfully subtle dynamic range of this recording, on both CD and DVD, that really got me thinking.<br /><br />One of the theoretical rules for digital audio states that you get 6dB of dynamic range per bit (actually, it’s 6.0206dB, but who’s counting?). So a 16-bit recording has a dynamic range of 16 x 6dB = 96dB, while a 24-bit recording has 144dB (in practice, problems such as thermal noise restrict this to around 120dB). How much dynamic range do we need? Let’s consider the dynamic range of human hearing. If the softest sound we can hear is 0dB SPL (Sound Pressure Level), then the threshold of pain is somewhere around 130dB SPL. That gives human hearing a dynamic range of 130dB. Yet many of our latest commercial recordings have a paltry 6dB or less!<br /><br />Dynamic range – the ability to play softer or louder – is one of the most important forms of musical expression. So why are we so hell-bent on reducing it? There is a commonly held belief that for a recording to be commercially successful, it must be as loud as every other commercial recording, or louder! Because we can only get so much level onto a CD, this perceived loudness is created by applying powerful compression during the mastering stage, thereby sacrificing dynamic range.<br /><br />Many musicians compare their mixes against songs heard on commercial radio. Invariably, the radio songs have more ‘punch’, so musicians want more punch (i.e. compression) applied to their mixes to make them competitive. What they fail to understand is that commercial radio stations apply considerable processing, including multiband compression, to their audio before transmitting it – and that’s what produces the extra ‘punch’. Broadcasters have their reasons for doing this; some good, some bad. Nonetheless, what we hear on commercial radio is a heavily processed version of the artist’s mastered mix. Using commercial radio as a mixing or mastering reference is a big mistake.<br /><br />Once upon a time, all mastering was done by talented specialists who understood the concept of dynamic range and the processes used in broadcasting, and strived to produce a finished result that translated well into any environment. These people truly deserved the title of ‘mastering engineers’. Many are still in business today, but staying in business means doing what the client wants – including heavy compression. It compromises the sound quality, and it therefore compromises their professional reputation.<br /><br />Worse yet, the true professionals now face a particularly ugly competitor: backyard wannabes with PCs, soundcards, six months experience and the nerve to call themselves mastering engineers! Ask these people to define ‘mastering’ and they’ll tell you it’s the process of making each mix as loud as possible. As Charlie Brown says, “Good grief…”.<br /><br />Maintaining your dynamic range is an important part of maintaining your musical expression. Remember, it’s the soft parts of your mix that make the loud parts ‘loud’. I’m tired of listening to music that’s compressed to the max and continuously in-your-face. I’m tired of listening to commercial CDs that are designed to make my high quality monitoring system sound like commercial radio. It sounds bad, it’s fatiguing to listen to, and it implies that I, as a listener, have a limited attention span. It’s just as insulting as the excessively loud canned laughter you hear on TV sitcoms. AND IT’S JUST AS ANNOYING AS PEOPLE WHO WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.<br /><br />So, when it comes to mastering your mixes, keep a level head and say ‘no’ to heavy compression. (Your mixes will still sound punchy on the radio, because commercial broadcasters will still be doing what they’ve always done.) As for me, I’m saving to buy a DVP-S715 DVD player and as many well-recorded 24-bit 96k DVDs as I can get my hands on. Philip, on the other hand, is waiting for the Spice Girls to be remastered at 24-bit 96k. In the meantime, he’s borrowing my ear plugs…Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-38525123742230384922009-02-28T16:20:00.019+11:002009-03-02T20:33:42.202+11:00FFW02: Learning to listen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWP2GE2oUUH_hdiv9bj7JwFojSTc56Oz12SdqhmidCm211G9HfULO276BER2OJty-oq4_7qkSY4N9NfPGDX9dkcykfleaahuDYVNBW4AirNxz9wKjQ1WZXqu50Fb1sEP20A7Qi5dJJgLI/s1600-h/issue02cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 149px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWP2GE2oUUH_hdiv9bj7JwFojSTc56Oz12SdqhmidCm211G9HfULO276BER2OJty-oq4_7qkSY4N9NfPGDX9dkcykfleaahuDYVNBW4AirNxz9wKjQ1WZXqu50Fb1sEP20A7Qi5dJJgLI/s200/issue02cover.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5308520686061764322" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">My initiation into audiophilia! After spending a night listening to some serious audiophile recordings through my high quality ATC reference monitors, I was somewhat impressed by the vocabulary used by audiophiles to describe subjective aspects of sound. I was also somewhat concerned that I had never thought to listen for those things, let alone assign words to describe them. I learnt a lot about the art of listening that night; stuff that has affected my approach to recording, mixing and mastering ever since. [In fact, my quest for </span>realism <span style="font-style:italic;">in recordings morphed into a search for </span>reality <span style="font-style:italic;">in recordings - a search that took me to the Himalaya and, ultimately, into the arms of my beautiful Nepalese wife Punam!]<br /><br />Issue 02 of AudioTechnology contained interviews I'd done with David Chesky and Bob Katz regarding a CD released on Chesky Records called 'I Ching: Of the Marsh and the Moon'. Chesky Records are a well-known audiophile label, and I thought it prudent to write a First Word that provided a subtle linked to the interview and also put across an audiophile point of view.<br /><br />The Chesky/Katz interviews went beyond the engineering/recording technique and ventured into the design and circuitry of the recording equipment itself, which sat nicely alongside part two of my three-part interview with Rupert Neve (further discussions of sound quality from a designer's point of view). As an editor, I was always on the look-out for an emerging theme within an issue, and this one was staring me right in the face!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Learning to listen</span><br />A couple of guys I know are building a D/A converter. While most readers will think that’s a pretty impressive feat, those familiar with digital electronics won’t be so impressed. Any half smart technician can knock together a ‘quick and dirty’ D/A converter with a small collection of LSI chips, a handful of op amps and a late night session with the soldering iron. Given the right chips, it’s a bit like Lego blocks…<br /><br />But these guys, Terry and Craig, have spent most of their spare time over the last three years working on this converter. Why spend so long building something that can be thrown together in an evening? Because Terry and Craig are serious high fidelity listeners, and their converter is designed for audiophiles who demand a high standard of sound quality. That means lots of designing, redesigning, building and listening. And that’s how I got involved…<br /><br />While planning the first issue of AudioTechnology, I got the following phone call. “Hello, Greg? Terry here, mate. We’ve built a D/A converter and need to borrow some super accurate studio monitors for our listening tests. Still got your 20s?” He was referring to my trusty old ATC SCM20 passive monitors, which I had sworn by for years. Little did he know that I was, at that very moment, reviewing ATC’s new SCM20A PRO active monitors, but finding the sonic quality of my ‘pro’ studio equipment to be hopelessly under-specified. Knowing Terry and Craig’s hi-fi leanings, this was the perfect win/win opportunity – they get to hear their D/A converter through a pair of very accurate studio monitors, and I get to connect said monitors to some very good audiophile equipment. I bundled the ATCs in the car, grabbed a pile of my favourite reference discs, and hit the highway.<br /><br />The evening that followed was surreal, to say the least. In an earlier draft of this column I wrote 600 words describing what we did and what we heard that night – listening to the differences between silver and copper interconnect cables, hearing the detrimental effects of placing little wooden cones under the D/A converter, and so on. Then I deleted it all because you probably wouldn’t believe it anyway, especially if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool sound engineer who thinks hi-fi guys are nuts and everything is hunky-dory in studio land. Let me tell you, it isn’t.<br /><br />My collection of reference discs contains the same discs you’ll find in other engineers’ collections, all representing good sound engineering. But against some of the audiophile standard discs we played that night, my discs were embarrassingly inadequate. The ATCs, on the other hand, were superlative and easily rose to the audiophile challenge. As did Terry and Craig’s D/A converter.<br /><br />The biggest revelation of the night, however, was not what we were listening to, but how we were listening to it. Sound engineers in the studio have the luxury of soloing a channel to get a fix on a particular instrument. Once your ear/brain system gets a lock on that instrument in isolation, it’s much easier to identify it within a complex mix. Audiophiles, on the other hand, never have that luxury because they only have access to finished and mastered stereo mixes. By necessity, they develop very different listening skills and a different vocabulary – a broader language evolved to describe and ‘isolate’ individual aspects of a recording in the absence of a solo button.<br /><br />The sound engineer’s vocabulary contains a handful of simple words for describing the sonic qualities of individual tracks, such as warm, cold, bright, and dull. It also contains words for describing the mix, such as clarity, separation, width, and depth, plus terms like dynamic range and signal-to-noise.<br /><br />The audiophile’s vocabulary extends to phrases like midrange purity, visceral impact, focus, rhythm and pace, blackness, and holographic imaging. These aren’t just fancy ways of saying simple things, they represent intangible and unmeasurable aspects of sound quality - aspects you may not even consider if your understanding of sound quality is limited to the sound engineer’s ‘track by track’ vocabulary.<br /><br />So there I was, alone with my sound engineer’s vocabulary, flanked by two well-versed audiophiles. I don’t know if they heard the qualities I enjoyed on my reference discs, but I had certainly never noticed the aspects they were criticising, until they pointed them out to me in the vocabulary of the audiophile. Like so many subjective things, you often can’t hear something in a recording until someone brings it to your attention. From then on, you know what to listen for and you’ll always hear it.<br /><br />In his book ‘Word Power’, Edward de Bono explains how words represent concepts. When you understand a word, you understand the concept. Like many concepts, the subjective aspects of sound quality are intangible. Without the right word, you have no way of communicating what you’re hearing. In fact, you may not even know what to listen for. As a sound engineer or recording musician, if you can’t communicate what you’re hearing or don’t know what you’re listening for, you’re in trouble.<br /><br />There’s a layer of sound quality beyond that which most sound engineers, recording musicians and equipment designers are aware of, because we don’t have the concepts to explain it or the equipment to reveal it. But it’s real and not hard to demonstrate. All you need is access to a proper audiophile hi-fi system and the right reference discs. I’d highly recommend ‘The Ultimate Demonstration Disc’ from Chesky Records. It contains a selection of tracks demonstrating the audiophile’s vocabulary, with narration between tracks describing what to listen for. If you buy this CD and don’t notice the sound qualities they’re demonstrating, get a better playback system!<br /><br />The audiophile point of view will become increasingly important as we enter this era of larger word sizes and higher sampling rates. When you hear a recording that satisfies both the sound engineer and the audiophile, you’ll also hear a level of musicality rarely found on commercial CDs. And isn’t ‘musicality’ what it’s all about? The more musicality we can get into our recordings, the better. But first, we have to learn to listen.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">My association with Terry and Craig continues. Most notably, from 2000 to 2003 Terry designed, built and continually refined a beautiful two-channel microphone preamplifier for use with my Royer SF12 stereo ribbon microphone. As part of that process he became a keen mountain biker (it's a long story) and enjoyed some serious air time on the trails around the Royal National Park. In 2003 the two of them joined forces to design and build a number of precision digital clock generator/distributors, to my specifications, for use at the Sydney Opera House.</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1576184703511740205.post-71413797985640301742009-02-28T14:52:00.019+11:002009-03-08T23:09:25.985+11:00FFW01: The money, the box, and the $5000 question...<span style="font-style:italic;">This First Word was published in AudioTechnology #01, our premiere issue, in February 1998. One of the highlights of that issue was part one of a fascinating three-part interview I'd conducted with equipment designer Rupert Neve (parts two and three were published in issues 02 and 03 respectively). I knew after completing the interview that I was onto something special, and decided to use the topic of equipment design and pricing to introduce our new magazine to the market. Combined with the Rupert Neve interview, I figured our readers would quickly realise that AudioTechnology was going to be a magazine that tried to tell it like it is; rather than being yet another fanboy magazine that never said a bad word about anything...<br /><br />Here's the first First Word:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The money, the box, and the $5000 question</span><br />I was recently given a new product to review, which I’ll refer to as ‘The Box’ for reasons which will become obvious later. The Box was a stereo version of a tool that every sound engineer uses on a regular basis – except this one was a tube device, and therefore added that warm and fuzzy tube sound to whatever signal passed through it. I immediately thought of Rick O’Neil.<br /><br />Anyone who knows Rick will know these three facts: Firstly, he has the smartest and most screwed up cat in town, which has nothing to do with this story. Secondly, he’s a lover of all things warm and fuzzy, including his cat, which still has nothing to do with this story. Thirdly, he’s never short of an opinion, and will probably denigrate me for mentioning his cat when it has nothing to do with this story.<br /><br />As a lover of all things warm and fuzzy, and one who’s never short of an opinion, Rick was the obvious candidate for the review. I gave him The Box, a deadline and a word count. Soon after, he called with a problem. The Box was working perfectly, but there was a similar product in his studio – which we’ll call The Other Box – that was considerably cheaper. It offered the same features, looked and sounded almost as good, and was built almost as well. But The Other Box cost only $2000, while The Box was $5000 more expensive. When describing The Box in comparison to The Other Box, Rick’s enduring words were: “It’s better, but I can’t hear $5000”.<br /><br />Those words have stuck in my head ever since, alongside other gems such as “That’s a problem we should be glad to have” (G. Maxwell Twartz, Technical Audio Group), and “Show me the money” (Cuba Gooding Jr, Hollywood).<br /><br />Rick’s comment raises an interesting question – what is $5000 supposed to sound like? More generically, what is a 350% price differential (from $2000 to $7000) supposed to sound like? What do you hear for the extra money?<br /><br />Audio Technology’s Sales Director, Philip Spencer, has a story of his own. Before coming to Australia, Philip ran a recording studio in England based on a low cost but popular brand of mixing console. One day he had the opportunity of visiting the offices of AMEK, and was given a demonstration of their ‘Big by Langley’ console. As the salesman talked him through the channel strip, Philip said, “Wait a minute… My console has most of these features, and can do most of these things. How do you justify charging three and a half times the price for this one?” The salesman directed Philip’s attention to the EQ stage, rolled the tape and walked out of the room. Never being afraid to give a knob a twiddle, Philip reached for the EQ and answered his own question. He heard the difference. Whether the increase in sound quality was proportional to the price increase is debatable. But once again, what is a 350% price differential supposed to sound like?<br /><br />In the case of The Box, Rick has been around high end studio gear long enough to know that he wasn’t hearing a $5000 difference. Perhaps a $2000 or $3000 difference, but not $5000. Philip, on the other hand, had been using the same console for so long that he no longer ‘heard’ what it was doing to his sound. He didn’t believe that a console offering similar features, but costing three and a half times more, could be worth the investment – until he heard the sound of that extra money. To badly paraphrase Cuba Gooding Jr, “Hear me the money!”<br /><br />So what do you get for the extra dollars? You get that wonderful tonal character we call ‘the sound’. Good musical instruments have it, high end hi-fi gear has it, even Harley Davidson motorbikes have it. When you enter the world of expensive pro audio equipment, it’s one of the things you’re paying for.<br /><br />With state-of-the-art electronics, any technician can design a circuit that satisfies the technical criteria for low noise, low distortion, wide bandwidth, linear frequency response, etc. Those old challenges have been well and truly overcome, and the circuit design process is cheap and easy. The rash of low cost, high quality products entering the market over the last decade are testament to this. They’re clean, they’re quiet, and they do a great job for the money – but few of them have ‘the sound’.<br /><br />So why does it cost so much more to get that little bit extra, that elusive quality we call ‘the sound’? It costs more because you’re paying for an experienced and talented designer who knows how to build warmth and musicality into a product. These qualities don’t come cheap, and they can’t be added to an existing circuit. They have to be engineered into the circuit from the very beginning. And that’s expensive.<br /><br />No matter how good a circuit’s technical specifications are, it will always contain certain non-linearities that define its characteristic ‘sound’ – for better or worse. When you buy a premium product, you’re paying for a designer who knows how to tweak those non-linearities into musically pleasing sounds. You’re paying for someone who knows how to control the harmonic content of the distortion so it sounds warm and smooth, rather than cold and harsh. You’re paying for someone who knows how to shift the energy spectrum of the noise floor into less audible frequency bands, and how to minimise the detrimental effects of phase problems and ringing.<br /><br />If all these tweaks are considered a science, then the art lies in the designer’s ability to engineer them directly into the fundamental signal path of the circuit. They are the inherent non-linearities of a circuit designed to sound warm and musical, while still satisfying all the technical criteria.<br /><br />And that’s the kind of specialist designer artwork you should be paying a premium for, no matter whether you’re buying audio electronics, a prestige car, a Stradivarius violin, or a suit from Giorgio Armani. Designers of the calibre of Rupert Neve et al, have advanced the design of audio circuitry to a sonic artform. Who can put a price on that kind of talent?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I was always fond of mentioning my interactions with the other AudioTechnology writers and staff members in First Word, because it showed the sense of community that existed behind the magazine - and, ultimately, behind its success. This First Word makes references to Philip Spencer and Rick O'Neil.<br /><br />Philip was my business partner in forming Alchemedia Pty Ltd, the publishing company we created for AudioTechnology. We met while working on Australian Digital magazine for The Federal Publishing Company; but, more significantly, we started Sound Australasia magazine for Pacific Publications. It would be fair to say that neither of us was particularly happy with that magazine - it started off with much promise, but was continually pushed in the direction of sensationalism and gossip. (What would you expect from a publisher of celebrity gossip magazines?!?!)<br /><br />Not long after I resigned from Sound Australasia, Philip presented the idea of starting our own magazine. And thus was born AudioTechnology - the audio magazine that </span> I <span style="font-style:italic;">always wanted to read. Philip continues to run and grow Alchemedia, and continues to be one of the coolest guys I've ever worked with. (Anyone who could put up with the pretentious bullshit I carried on with in the early days of AudioTechnology - all with the intention of making the best audio magazine ever, of course - deserves much respect!)<br /><br />In addition to being one of Australia's top mastering engineers, Rick O'Neil is a great story teller and writes a regular column for AudioTechnology that continues to this day. Called 'Last Word', it is the last thing published in each issue. By placing my somewhat serious First Word at the start and Rick's humorously provocative Last Word at the end, Rick and I formed the bookends for each issue of AudioTechnology.<br /><br />Last Word began life in AudioTechnology's miserable predecessor, Sound Australasia. One day in 1996 Rick visited my office at Pacific Publications saying he wanted to write a regular column similar to the late great Stephen St Croix's 'Fast Lane' column in Mix magazine. I figured he was worth giving a chance, and it paid off: Last Word has been one of the most popular columns in AudioTechnology for more than a decade now, and Rick's name has become a household word in the Australian recording industry. He also runs a lively on-line audio forum.</span>Greg Simmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13819438051130144159noreply@blogger.com2