Table of contents for Issue 135 in AudioTechnology

As with ‘Here Comes The Sun’, the mix session for ‘Come Together’ has reference tracks at the top, starting with the 2009 CD remaster, a copy of the original CD, and two transfers of the original stereo mix, one using CCIR, the other MRL tape aligning. Below that are five prints of Martin and Okell’s mixes. Below these are four greyed-out tracks from a tape that was not used. The main interest in the new mix of ‘Come Together’ lies in the way they made the drums more stereo, as Okell explains. “The first active drum track, with simply ‘Drums’ in the comments box, is cut out in some sections. In the main riff section where Ringo is doing that hi-hat/ tom fill pattern, we cut out the hi-hat and…

After a long hiatus from the studio due to lead singer Dave Hosking’s struggle with chronic illness, Boy & Bear had plenty of time to consider their next long player. Taking up the production reins themselves and bunkering down with uber-engineer Collin Dupuis (Lana Del Ray, The Black Keys) in Nashville was part of that journey. Adapting the production process to suit each song, along with distorting pianos, phasing strings and speeding up tape machines, all helped to deliver a wide-screen cinematic result. Greg Walker: Given all that has happened since your previous record, what discussions took place within the band about making this new record? Killian Gavin: Every time you make a record you should hopefully learn a lot. We had a heap of chats over the last couple…

It’s strange to call it a ‘homecoming’ but for Sampa The Great, her Melbourne show at the Forum was just that — a hometown celebration. The Zambian-born rapper was raised in Botswana and jetted to California to study music for film, before moving to Sydney to pursue an SAE course in audio production. But since 2018, Melbourne has been home. Teaming with producer Alejandro ‘JJ’ Abapo to make ‘The Return’ LP, released late 2018 and garnering a Best Hip Hop Album ARIA nomination along the way. Sampa has toured the world. Mostly she travels light, flying in and out of festivals and short tours. There’s been a commensurately frugal approach to production but Sampa pulled out all stops for the sold out Forum show. Joining the core group of keys,…

When AKG decided to take the path-most-trodden and move production to Asia, a core group of engineers, designers and management decided to stay put in Austria and keep the dream of superior Teutonic microphone manufacturing alive. With several filing cabinets worth of new design ideas, an ambitious R&D program and plenty of organisational nous, Austrian Audio was born. The company’s first offering is the OC818, a microphone that blends classic capsule design with bleeding edge digital innovation to create something quite unique. MAKING HISTORY “On vocals the mic was great, delivering what I was increasingly coming to associate with it: superb tonal balance with trouble free low-end and silky highs that took EQ very well...” When AKG moved away from their iconic 1950s valve-based microphone designs and released the C414…

PRICE $999 CONTACT (03) 8373 4817 sales@linkaudio.com.au www.linkaudio.com.au PROS Fun, flexible and sounds good Solid build and easy to operate Plenty of future updates CONS The keyboard is unusual and lacks sensitivity SUMMARY The ELZ-1 ‘synthesizer reinvention laboratory’ isn’t just yet another pocket synth. There’s plenty of scope for producing something different. Sonicware has demonstrated its commitment to the product with interesting software updates. For the price the ELZ-1 is a pocket rocket.…

PRICE $2650 (expect to pay) CONTACT Turramurra Music: (02) 9449 8487 or hitech_sales@turramusic.com.au PROS DSP effects sound great Outstanding DAC conversion Loads of I/O in small form factor CONS Software support a little unstable at times SUMMARY A 32-input interface is just the beginning — the real value of the Antelope Discrete 8 Synergy Core is in its substantial DSP power, in addition to the brand’s established use of FPGA chips. The onboard effects sound incredible, as does the hardware itself. Behind the unassuming exterior is an extremely capable interface.…

Electro-Voice has a long and illustrious history, but may not be the first name that comes to mind when thinking about wireless systems – most likely it will be one of the other big brands that dominate the professional end of the business. EV is one of several companies challenging that domination by offering products of comparable performance, but with their own unique designs and sonic characteristics. Its recently released RE3 system replaces the ageing RE2 range with all-new designs, improved performance and more contemporary looks. Operating analogue in the UHF frequency range between 560MHz to 596MHz, it’s capable of operating eight groups of 22 channels concurrently. The UHF frequency range has some international geographic restrictions and exists at the whim of government regulation, but offers increased multichannel capability and…

Theatrical productions are tough audio. Mixing bands has its own challenges, but at least the vocalists sing into the mics. I had cause to reflect on this while visiting Sydney’s State Theatre to see the non-stop whirl of songs, dance and gymnastics known as Bring It On: The Musical. Based on the loyalties and rivalries of competing cheerleaders, the show is focused on the performers and the choreography. The audio production includes 22 wireless headset channels and a live band. Sound designer Greg Ginger from Outlook Communications gave me a look around. “With most of the cast in cheerleader outfits, hiding the wireless bodypack transmitters and keeping them in place as the performers jumped around could be an even bigger problem.” HIDING THE BAND The show needs all the floor…

While recording traditional music in Vanuatu, producer/engineer Tim Cole learnt of a heritage shared by island communities throughout Asia, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Most of those communities were established by ancient seafarers; the indigenous people of Taiwan who, thousands of years ago, pushed their boats out to sea and headed for the horizon. Inspired by this, Tim thought “What an incredible wealth of cultures, music and instruments to base an album on.” A year later he was in Australia’s remote Central Desert recording Inmas (songlines) of the Pintupi Elders. Their ancient songs were full of information about living on the land, maintaining social systems in harmony with nature, and more. That night, while listening to the IPCC report on climate change, a tragic irony struck him: the…

In over 20 years of working as a location recordist and sound designer, I have recorded and produced audio for interactive media, sound libraries, movie trailers, film, virtual reality and augmented reality. Yes, that is as fun as it sounds! In doing so, I’ve discovered that each of these formats has different needs and requires a different approach to creating the content. In this article, I’m going to share what I’ve learnt. CAPTURE The most important thing when recording is to capture a great sound; we have to hunt down those rare and interesting sound opportunities like a photographer chasing the perfect sunset. Location recording is much more than just pointing a microphone at something noisy – it is about discovering a world so rich with incredible sound sources that…

PRICE OC818 Microphone: RRP $2099 OCR8 Bluetooth Dongle: RRP $299 CONTACT Group Technologies Australia (03) 9354 9133 sales@grouptechnologies.com.au PROS Great studio all-rounder with excellent sonics Dual diaphragm design Comprehensive filter, pad and polar pattern options Remote digital control adds continuously variable polar options Innovative and powerful PolarDesigner plug-in delivers multiband polar shaping, EQ and spill minimisation Mounting and windshield options supplied Designed and built in Vienna, Austria CONS USB Dongle for Polar Pilot app not supplied No frequency response charts published Rear mounted mini-plug a little fiddly SUMMARY Austrian Audio’s OC818 marries hand-built European pedigree with cutting edge digital technology to produce a top quality microphone that shines on almost any source. The mic’s smooth and classy sonics are augmented by multiband polar mix processing and remote set-up control to…

Many years ago I had a grand to blow on a pair of nearfield monitors. I’d come to the realisation that my mixes weren’t translating well; I simply couldn’t nail it. The out-the-back-of-a-white-van home stereo speakers I’d repurposed were utter garbage. Mixing 101, I know, but I was at the beginning of my mixing journey. It was time to sink some money into monitoring rather than sequencers, synths and MIDI cables. Back then the nearfield monitoring options at the sub-$1000 mark were thin on the ground. After traipsing around the usual Sydney instrument stores auditioning various contenders, scrutinising pages of specifications and absorbing everything remarked upon in audio mags, the choice came down to a measly three candidates… and they were all passive so I needed to buy an amplifier…

Modal Electronics is renowned for its range of high-end boutique synthesizers, with the Modal 008 providing the most complete embodiment of features one could want in a modern polyphonic analogue synth. Skulpt is Modal’s polyphonic follow-up to their earlier low-cost DSP monophonic synth, Craft, which was a self-assembled kit. Craft’s pedigree and price garnered the curiosity of the synth community, and provided a taste of where Modal was headed with their DSP synth product line. FIRST IMPRESSIONS Upon unpacking the unit, it’s clear Modal shoehorned substantial synthesizer power into a very lightweight and compact box. Its construction is unashamedly plastic (with the exception of the glass-like finish on its touch-keyboard) and its front-panel knobs are PCB mounted. The rather fragile micro-USB standard socket has been used for USB connectivity (providing…

“There are many subtle changes in the balances and positioning, and we expanded on many of the mono sources that are hard panned and hard positioned, in order to try to create a more cohesive stereo image.” “There are two original acoustic guitar tracks; they had been bounced together on the second-generation tape the song was mixed from, but because we could go back to the first-generation tape we were able to get them as separate tracks again. They both have the FabFilter Pro-Q2. Then we added the ADT effect to each guitar track, this time done with tape recorders, and printed the ADT tracks back in. We again panned the original track and the ADT track slightly differently to create a bit of space. Those guitars were a bit…

The 6000 series as used in Bring It On consisted of three components: the SK6212 digital bodypack transmitters, the EM6000 digital receivers, and the LM6000 charging module. Matchbox-sized at 63 x 47 x 20mm, the SK6212 bodypack is about half the size we’re used to. Weight is also about half, at 112g total with the BA62 lithium-polymer rechargeable battery on board. LiPo batteries are expensive but light, and the BA62s allow an astonishing 12 hours of operation between charges. They can be removed and recharged in the Digital 6000 rackmount charger via the dedicated LM6062 charging module. The long battery life made everything easier for Bring It On, especially on days with two shows. Greg showed me one unit that had been on for four hours and still indicated a…

Situated in the outskirts of a remote town about an hour’s drive from Stockholm, Sunlight Studios is synonymous with the sound of Swedish Death Metal. It was here that the sound of the genre was formed, with Entombed’s groundbreaking debut album ‘Left Hand Path’, produced and engineered by Tomas Skogsberg. Aside from Entombed, Skogsberg has left his mark on recordings from At The Gates, Darkthrone, Katatonia, The Backyard Babies, The Hellacopters and more. Working out of a converted barn with relatively simple equipment, Skogsberg’s approach is more about the attitude than the gear... Joe Matera: You started Sunlight Studios in 1982. What led you to that decision? Tomas Skogsberg: I was working in studios with people who were always thinking ‘inside the box’. I would ask them to stop looking…

Sonicware offers some tasty new sound treats with their ELZ-1 ‘synthesizer reinvention laboratory’. It sits in the sub-$1k area of the market also occupied by Korg’s constantly growing Volca series and Teenage Engineering’s OP-Z and Pocket Operator products, so buyers are already spoilt for choice with a smorgasbord of relatively inexpensive sound generators. So what’s different about the all-digital ELZ-1? Let’s flip the bonnet and find out. THE SOUND The ELZ-1 is a six-voice synth with Poly, Mono and Legato modes and has a generous selection of flexible and evocative sounding synthesis types, which I’ve listed elsewhere this page. The ELZ-1 has a good selection of filter types designed to sculpt and enhance the various sound generation types: LPF-6, LPF-12, HPF-6, HPF-12, BPF, PEQ, Lo EQ, Hi EQ, Notch. Complex…

I remember the day my Antelope Audio Zen Tour desktop interface arrived in a parcel and I rushed home to set it up in my small studio setup. Hearing audio for the first time through the Zen Tour’s pristine conversion was a revelatory moment, for me — like a blanket was lifted from my studio monitors and I was finally listening to the real thing. I’m a believer in the Antelope difference. Besides the impeccable conversion, another Antelope selling point is its use of built-in FPGA processing chips. Interfaces such as the Zen Tour, Orion Studio and Goliath HD all possess internal processing power to run Antelope plug-ins in real-time thanks to these powerful chips. Now with a new family called Synergy Core, Antelope is exploring the world of DSP.…

It was with much relief that I discovered Modal’s standalone MODALapp Editor/ Librarian as a free download for iOS, MacOS, Windows and Android. There is also the MODALplugin, providing VST3/AU plugins for use within your preferred DAW (for MacOS and Windows). The plugin is of particular interest since it is the workflow I love, with all controls available for automation and patches being stored within DAW projects. The Editor gives an excellent overall representation of the synth which is invaluable for exploring its structure. When using the app version on tablet devices, multi-touch interaction is fully supported. The GUI is 100% scalable, catering for high-resolution displays. The Editor extends the functionality of Skulpt with the means to name patches, store local banks of sounds, drag’n’drop curation of new patch banks…