The Creative Music Recording Magazine
Joe Boyd Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, R.E.M., more...
Bob Power Seminal NYC Hip-Hop engineer
Sonicraft Steve Puntolillo’s obsession with sonics
Jace Lasek/ Dave Smith Montreal’s Breakglass Studio
Mike Castoro In Behind The Gear
TapeOpCon Gear Reviews CD Reviews
$4.50 No.
60
July/Aug 2007
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Letters TapeOpCon wrap-up Mike Castoro in Behind the Gear Jace Lasek and Dave Smith: Breakglass Joe Boyd Bob Power Steve Puntolillo & Sonicraft Gear Reviews CD Revews The End Rant
Okay, for those of you following my misadventures over the latest issues, here’s an update. We finished moving Jackpot! (my crazy studio) into our new Hamptone digs in Portland at the beginning of June. What do they say about doubling time and money when you build a house or start a business? It was like that. Ouch. The studio is now open, and studio manager Kendra did the first tracking with a BBC radio session for The Gossip. Engineers are giving it a favorable review, so we’re relieved. What was weird for me was to not be the first engineer to track there, as Jenna and I had to hit the road to get back to Arizona to our home and then to Tucson for the sixth and final TapeOpCon. “Final?” you ask? Check out the TapeOpCon recap this issue. Now we’re off to host Jackpot!’s 10 year anniversary and opening party. Eventually will all this settle down? I’m not even sure how the mag gets done at this point. Just kidding. My pal Dave Allen recently (via his website www.pampelmoose.com) recently turned me onto , a concept noted by Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson (and recently in book form as The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, published by Hyperion). The idea is that in media there are the “hit” products with mass sales (the green part of the chart above) and then the “non-hit” products with less sales (the yellow part to the right). What he’s noticed is that companies like Netflix and Amazon are selling more volume of the “non-hit” products. This is happening with online music retail and downloads as well. And this is the theory that I always had in my mind about Tape Op. Most of the music being recorded in the world is being done in low (no?) to mid budget recording scenarios. This might seem obvious, but eleven years ago when I would look at the cover of other magazines and see some brand new room with a $250,000 console that I would never be able to set foot in, I knew that there was a world of music recording that was being ignored. My friends and I were all making records with great local engineers and studios, and some of us recorded releases at home on out-of-date gear. Eleven years on it seems more obvious than ever that great music can come from many different places - and as an avid music fan I’m happier than ever about that. Bring on The Long Tail. It’s where most of us really live. www.thelongtail.com
The Long Tail
Larry Crane, Editor
The Creative Music Recording Magazine
Editor Larry Crane
Publisher & Graphic Design John Baccigaluppi
UK and European Publisher Alexander Lawson and Nadia Osta
Gear Reviews Editor
Recording Tips Editor
Andy “Gear Geek” Hong
Garrett Haines
Contributing Writers & Photographers Cover design by Scott McChane (
[email protected]) Christine Wilhelmy, John Cuniberti, Eric Masunga, Mark B. Christensen, JJ Golden, Craig Schumacher, Russ Berger, Maureen Droney, Francis Manzella, George Massenburg, Sally Browder, Ross Hogarth, Eric Ambel, Mark Rubel, Don Zientara, Joe Chicccarelli, Steve Silverstein, Skid Severson, Debbie Daking, Mike Jasper, Max Cooper, Martin Horn, Alissa Anderson, Allen Farmelo, Ronald Porty, David Weiss, Virginia Kamenitzer, Joel Hamilton, Mark Warren, Tony SanFilippo, Terry Setter, Scott Craggs, Pete Weiss, Dana Gumbiner, Jeff Elbel, Josh Peck, and Barry Hufker.
Internet Designers and Production Hillary Johnson
, AJ Wilhelm
Editorial and Office Assistants Caitlin Gutenberger, Jenna Sather, Holly Abney, Kendra Wright
Tape Op Conference Craig Schumacher, Director: [email protected]
Disclaimer TAPE OP magazine wants to make clear that the opinions expressed within reviews, letters and articles are not necessarily the opinions of the publishers. Tape Op is intended as a forum to advance the art of recording, and there are many choices made along that path.
Editorial Office (for submissions, letters, CDs for review. CDs for review are also reviewed in the Sacramento office, address below) P.O. Box 14517, Portland, OR 97293 ph/fx (503) 232-6047 [email protected] All submissions and letters sent to us become the property of Tape Op.
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Tape Op Magazine PO Box 160995, Sacramento, CA 95816 (916) 444-5241 www.tapeop.com Tape Op is published by Single Fin, Inc. (publishing services) and Jackpot! Recording Studio Inc. (editorial services)
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Thanks for getting Tape Op to our shores here in the UK. I read it cover to cover - I just couldn’t put it down. Thanks for a great read, not just great gear reviews. Its nice to see you still appreciate ears and warm EQs in the USA, rather than bit depth and DC to light frequency response. I suppose I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life in front of a computer monitor! All the best
and jolly good show.
Dow Fereday I am hoping you can clarify something for me. I have been doing a lot of “creating” within Mac’s GarageBand, using loops and samples from the Jam Packs. From the documents I have read, these loops and samples are all royalty free with regard to compositions and creations I make. I’m not trying to “get by” with anything unethical or illegal - I just want to be sure that I am understanding this correctly. I have a CD ready to release on a small “indie scale”. Do I need to say that the cuts were all created in GarageBand? If so, do I have to get permission to use the name GarageBand to acknowledge them? Marc Jonathan Haney Essentially, a user can use the content provided with GarageBand or the Jam Packs (instruments and loops) royalty-free as part of their own original compositions and productions. The user just can’t re-sell the loops. Here’s what our Software License Agreement says: “Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single computer at a time. You may use the Apple and third party audio loop content (“Audio Content”), contained in or otherwise included with the Apple Software, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original soundtracks for your video and audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own soundtracks that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual samples, sound sets, or audio loops may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound libraries, sound effects or music beds.” The entire GarageBand/Jam Pack Software License Agreement is located here: http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/garagebandjam.pdf Christine Wilhelmy, PR Program Manager Pro Applications
Chris and Larry, I just read your question [about low end perception and mixing] Larry’s response. and Monitoring is definitely part of the problem. This is a situation that plagues many home and prosumer recordists. The dinosaur’s answer is actually a question: Why is this a new problem? In the dark ages of tape, (usually at 30 ips) the low end was limited by the medium, about 45 Hz and you were gone. Also, studios had large monitors that typically had two 15” speakers on each side, and somewhat well-designed rooms where you could actually hear 40 Hz. We had well designed HVAC that were pretty quiet and were naturally protected from this situation. Now digital recorders can typically record flat to 10 Hz, while small monitors maybe get you to 80 Hz. The result is that it is extremely easy to record lots of trash in the low end from HVAC, foot shuffling, and other general crap, without ever being able to hear it. This translates into a lot of useless energy in the bottom and worse, harmonics an octave or two higher. There is a simple cure, and it’s called the high pass filter. Unless you are recording something with real low end (low E on a standard tuned bass guitar is 41.2 Hz), ditch the bottom. As a general rule, use a 50 Hz HPF [high pass filter] on everything unless it actually messes with the sound. You will find that much of the mysterious “mud” is gone. Geoff Daking I’ve done this ever since getting my first semi-decent console. When mixing, I generally use HPFs on everything except kick drum, toms, top snare, bass guitar, low organ parts and such. Be careful that you aren’t running the source through an HPF when tracking and again at mixing - this can thin out the sound too much sometimes. Why I forgot to mention this last issue I’ll never know! Thanks Geoff! -LC
I was just reading the interview with Lincoln Fong in #59, and I have to say I was struck by something in particular in one of his responses. When talking about his work on Dirty Three’s Whatever You Love, You Are, he mentions how his method “would’ve been to go and get a better drum kit and then ask him to tune it.” I think this is a perfect example of how sometimes even things which don’t fit some kind of working norm or standard with regard to recording or the sound of an instrument in general really contribute to the character of a recording. As a drummer, as a fan of Dirty Three and as a fan of music in general, it’s the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of records like this [and others] that really make them worth listening to. While I’m sure not anyone can walk into a studio and get a good recording of a drum kit, I do know that Fong’s work on this record makes it a record I enjoy listening to, and I think a lot of that also has to do with There’s nothing requiring the user to credit the sounds he captures. Not having a “better drum kit” GarageBand or Apple whenever they release a song with makes this record sound the way it does, and I for one am one of their loops. grateful that things like this exist in the world. While Alan Korn maybe it wasn’t the optimal situation at the time, it serves the music and at the end of the day I think that’s Respond to Tape Op: all any of us can hope to do. [email protected] Nicholas Decarmine
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I am trying to learn about recording. I have taken classes and read several texts, but there are a lot of things I have forgotten because I don’t use them everyday, and there are many things I have not learned about yet. I read your magazine and find the information in it very valuable, but there are many things I still don’t understand yet as I have not dealt with them directly - throw in the myriad of equipment that is available, and I hope you can imagine how a beginner can become quite confused. I was hoping you could do something like a “beginner’s page” where you took an item and explained it, how and when it would be used, how it would be connected and whether it goes to hardware or a software program, etc. Maybe when gear is reviewed this type of information could be done as a footnote or something. Even some of the ads don’t have any information, and it’s hard to support your advertisers when you don t know what the equipment does. As an example, I see mic preamps going for thousands of dollars, but it talks about one input. Does that mean that for eight inputs, I need eight units? I realize that these things may be basic information for most readers, but as a beginner I look to magazines like yours to learn from. I was just hoping that you might be able to put in a little more info for the beginner, as I’m sure there are other folks besides myself that would benefit from this info. Dan Cameron I’ve thought about this situation in the past. Can we make a magazine that speaks to the beginner and the seasoned pro? I think we already do, but here’s the catch: Someone starting at the bottom will have to do a bit of homework to catch up. When I started recording music, I was driven. I read every book at the library, bought a few more and read every mag I could find. When I didn’t understand something I would take notes, and then look for the answers in my books. These days you could just Google the question, dig through a forum (careful about posting “newbie” questions unless you have thick skin or read the stickies!) or look for sites with tons of knowledge collected (I’ve seen a bunch of these). But the most important part, just like any learning experience, is to apply the knowledge to real world situations and to do this on a regular basis. And that means to record all the time. By the way, if a mic pre has one channel then you need one pre per mic to record simultaneous sources, like a drum set for example. Here’s a real simple explanation for an audio path: Source > mic or DI > preamp (but not if DI is line level out) > recording medium (tape deck, DAW or standalone device > mixer (could be within DAW or console) > monitor controller (could be part of console or DAW interface) > speakers or headphones. Post preamp or post recording medium (or console insert) you can place EQ, compression and such. Add extra channels up into the recording medium for more tracks in, and channels between the medium and mixer (or internal mixing in a DAW or standalone device) for more tracks to mix with. I hope this helps! -LC
I wanted to respond to one of Larry’s answers in #59. Jeff Boller wrote about a program called REAPER. He hyped it up and talked about its benefits, and he also spoke of the benefits that are involved in working with a company like Cockos Software (who makes REAPER). Larry responded with a dismissal of “That sounds like a great solution for you Jeff, and REAPER looks pretty cool, but try telling a potential client for your commercial studio that you don’t have Pro Tools and that they need to use ‘REAPER’ instead.” I think Larry missed the majority of the point of Boller’s email. It’s that kind of attitude - the “Pro Tools is the best-and-only software to use. All other software pales in comparison. Pro Tools can do no wrong” - that makes Pro Tools the only software that people will use or even respond to. The point Boller was making was not that “Everyone should try REAPER, it’s the next big thing!” but rather, “If other companies would take a hint from companies like Cockos Software, and actually respond to their customers’ needs instead of just assuming they know best, then there would be a more level playing field.” Eventually, some software company is going to do everything so right, in terms of both productivity, quality of software and customer service, that the “industry standard” is going to change, and if PT isn’t on top of its game, it’s going to lose its status. It’s happened before, and it will happen again, and it’s always the underdog (like Cockos) that makes a big push in the end. Brandon
In my response (which I should have elaborated on and didn’t consider a “dismissal”) I wasn’t saying that Pro Tools is the best or the worst, but was instead illustrating that in the commercial recording world it’s very hard to introduce a new recording system or to sell your business without adopting whatever product, good or bad, that is in vogue. Believe me, coughing up $15,000-plus for Pro Tools was not something I wanted to do, but to stay compatible with other studios and to give our clients what they were requesting, I felt like I had to go to PT HD. Andy and I are curious about and have been keeping an eye on REAPER, so I hope to see a review in Tape Op soon. -LC I didn’t get to thank you and John yet for publishing my question about recording upright pianos - as well as the incredible myriad of responses to my question! Since posing that question to you I have discovered some pretty incredible sounds and have experimented a bit with everything from the angle of the piano to the wall, the distance of the piano to the wall, to using a 1950s vulcanized rubber-coated contact microphone designed for mic’ing the soundboard of pianos and other stringed instruments - really interesting results. I will send you a copy of the album I am recording for an artist named Jonathan Bell once he presses and releases it. I am very proud of the sounds this 115 year-old piano can make (with a great human player, of course), that I have captured. I look forward to trying some of the suggestions from your magazine. Brendan Davies
I worked out of Atlantic Studios’ production department from ’86 to its demise in March ’03, and did CD mastering for most of those years, among the numerous other WEA projects necessary for a prominent company such as ours. We were the East Coast equivalent of our West Coast sister Warner Brothers Studios. My specialty was back-catalog remastering for CD. That, among other things, included the A to D transfer from (hopefully) the original master tape, EQ’ing (I never used a compressor for back-catalog releases), formatting for the new medium (CD), etc. I seem to have quite a fan club for the work I did back then (see SteveHoffman.tv). One thing, though. I was lucky to get my mastering credits printed anywhere in/on the printing of these reissues. It was like I didn’t exist. There are many possible reasons for that. One: Why spend $$$ on changing the label copy? Another: Who really knew who the mastering engineer was in the graphics/printing end of production/manufacturing? Who even knew that there was a mastering engineer? “These things happen by themselves,” maybe they thought. Or perhaps the timing wasn’t right, not enough time to get the engineer’s name before the release date. Who knew why, but I was lucky to get my name on one out of ten releases. Pathetic. Forget the fact that the studio manager got every single release from the company mailed to his door while the engineers were allowed a certain number of freebies. But that’s a whole ‘nother story. I like your mag. It talks when
others are quiet, informs where there are blackouts, excites where others chug... Zal Schreiber
Letters (continued on page 14)/Tape Op#60/13
There was one piece of advice that didn’t entirely register at the time, but which comes back to me again and again: One of your interviewees said: “An engineer should always be clean.” That seemed like an odd statement, but the idea kept nagging me in the back of my mind. People invest a lot of trust in recording engineers you expect your grocer, your banker, your doctor, your congressman to be clean... Duh! Of course! An engineer should always be clean! As a beleaguered parent who gets up at the crack of dawn and feeds, dresses and rushes his children to school before dashing to the studio, I have tended to let personal hygiene take a back seat to expediency. But now in the morning, I say to myself, “Do you really want to go to work with your hair a mess and that stubble all over your face? How will that stained shirt play with the artist or the producer?” The best message an engineer can send his or her client is that he/she is dedicated, serious and professional about his/her work. Being clean gets you half the way there, while being rumpled and disheveled puts you at a disadvantage right away. I have tried it for a few months now, and it works!
The best engineering tip I’ve ever read. Thanks for a great magazine! Jon Gordon
Suggestion # 18 in “What Makes A Good Recording Engineer?” - Tape Op Sept/Oct 2006. I said, “Keep the equipment and yourself clean at all times. Dirty equipment is a bad sign. A dirty engineer is even worse.” Keeping yourself and your equipment clean is a sign that you take pride in yourself, your work and respect the people around you. Nobody wants to sit next to someone in a small, badly air-conditioned room for ten hours who hasn’t taken a shower in a few days. Given the fact that you may be under some stress or occasionally step outside for a smoke could also promote an odor that can quickly fill a control room. Perfume, cologne or scented deodorant are also not welcomed in a small hot room. If you notice everyone leaving the room when you walk in this could be your problem, not your ideas. John Cuniberti I was a bit surprised at your response (or lack of response) to the two questions about creating better sounding MP3s in #59’s letters section. I think these are valid questions and would be a great subject for feedback from the Tape Op peanut gallery. My guess is that there are many readers who create MP3 and AAC files on a regular basis for any number of reasons. For me, I use MP3s to collaborate with people via email and I’ve even been asked to provide MP3 format files for lowbudget/no-budget movie projects. Recently I’ve been thinking about posting demos, outtakes and works-inprogress on my band’s website in MP3 and AAC formats. I think this is a great way to share some stuff that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day and it’d be nice if it sounded good. While I’ve done some research and writing about this myself, it’s become really obvious to me lately that there’s a lot more to this than just creating higher bit rate and/or variable bit rate files. Getting some insight into creating better sounding mixes and masters for compressed formats would be a great thing for a lot of us. Cliff Truesdell
14/Tape Op#60/Letters(continued on page 16)
MP3/AAC encoders tend to seek out and favor short, bright transients, so even imperceptibly tiny clicks from digital edits - which may be obscured by rhythm hits in a final mix - can suddenly jump out when compressed. Be sure to use zero crossings for all edits when possible. Eric Masunaga Apart from the obvious differences in the sound of the different types and resolutions of data compression algorithms, I don’t think there is any “magic formula” involved in making a better sounding MP3 or AAC. When I was working with the iTunes folks on their iTunes Originals series, I asked the same question and was told that since their data compression algorithm was specifically designed to use commercially available CDs as its starting point, the best way to get a great sounding “data compressed” mix, was to make a great sounding mix in the first place. I have noticed that tracks that are overly aggressively brick wall limited in mastering sound proportionally worse when data compressed. Doin’ the volume wars thing on your mix not only makes your master overly crispy, but it makes your MP3s suck too. Mark B. Christensen I think you had the answer in Larry’s initial response. Make the best quality mix/master that you can. Beyond that it’s in the hands of the end user and the limitations of their playback mediums. I’d like to know what these items are that have “become really obvious.” I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for, but I think in order to address this question correctly, we need to know what you don’t like about MP3s. JJ Golden I can’t quote John’s whole comment about A&R people and artists developing from his Bright Eyes’ review in issue #59 because it’s too long. You’ll have to trust me on its content, or pull out the last issue. John’s comment really bothers me because I have a hard time with the idea that artists need an A&R rep holding their hand to mature artistically. Personally, I’m really excited by the idea that artists have been freed from handholding, and left with the responsibilities of artistic growth fully in their own control. Obviously, I admire Conor’s commercial success, to say nothing of his charismatic stage persona and literate lyrical sense - my comments do not address this Bright Eyes record, which I haven’t heard. I am excited by more artists taking control of every part of their work and careers, ending the very role-based separation that my years of reading leftist theory have attempted to persuade me is the root of all evil (for an example relating to music, see Chris Cutler’s writing about the Residents in File Under Popular). I hear plenty of recent records with the type of artistic breadth that John praises. Living in Chicago and now New York, I’ve also found it surprisingly easy to find insanely talented musicians who work for far less than they deserve to help bring such records into existence (and have been lucky enough to record folks who’ve collaborated with everyone from Keith Rowe to Kevin Ayers as a result). I’m obviously saddened for many reasons that it’s gotten far harder to sell such records in this country (and harder as an American consumer to find them), but it doesn’t make me any less grateful that more artists control their own fates without hand-holding or “guidance”, and it doesn’t make me long for the return of business people with some sort of parental role in “artistic growth”. for not addressing these concerns by writing here. Steve Silverstein
I’d feel remiss
Hey Steve, thanks for the comments, but I think you misunderstood me a bit. I’m not advocating “handholding” as you put it, but giving an artist the time, space and artistic freedom to develop over the course of several years and albums. I think A & R reps in the best, classic sense of the word did this in the past and allowed artists to develop beyond the “get a hit record or you’re done” mentality. People like Joe Boyd [see his interview this issue], for instance, nurtured Nick Drake in a sensitive manner even though his records didn’t sell at the time. But those days are long gone. I completely agree with you that we live in a very exciting time for music and that it’s much easier for a wide variety of music to be both heard and distributed. Additionally, I think we are in an age where it’s possible for musicians to actually make a middle class living by performing and recording their music independent of a large corporation, which was much harder to do in the past decades of the rock star mentality and business model. I’m all for the demise of the corporate approach to marketing music and looking forward to whatever’s coming next, even if I’m not sure exactly what it will end up being. It has to be an improvement on the past few decades. -JB
First of all, the ISA430 is an analog channel strip. Perhaps you’re thinking tube? It’s a good piece of gear, and there are many great choices for quality mic preamps out there. I find that I change combinations of mic preamps and mics all the time, so even suggesting a preamp for a new U 87 on vocals is pretty much impossible as I would pick the preamp based on how it sounded with each different vocalist. I would first place more importance on making sure that the U 87 (or any mic) was exactly the mic you were looking for, and would emphasize getting to track with the mic and judge for yourself instead of reading a review of it or making assumptions. -LC
I really enjoyed your review of Bright Eyes’ Cassadaga. Mike did spend a lot of time and effort on it and it shows. I completely agree with you regarding American Idol, record labels and music - you said what I’ve been saying for a while. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw Larry’s rant on the last page. I was “accidentally” left off of Cassadaga for the mastering credit. That stung pretty bad. It’s not often that I work on a Billboard Top 10 release. I was also left off of the “Four Winds” single and Noise Floor, which was a B-sides/rarities release from last year. So I can appreciate what he was talking about from both sides. I do a lot of work for Saddle Creek and they will be fixing them on future pressings. We both know that credits are vital to our future work. So kudos to Larry! Doug Van Sloun
I have a baritone guitar at Jackpot!, and it sneaks into sessions now and then. I’ve also recorded a band before (Two Guys) that was baritone, vocals and drums (like The Evens). To work with bass and guitar it would all depend on the registers the player was using and the overall arrangement of the songs as to how the baritone would fit into a “band” concept. Just like a “normal” band, making room for everyone can be key to having a great sounding recording. -LC
I just fell in love... with a baritone guitar that is. But, before I buy it, I can’t help but wonder if the baritone and a standard 4-string bass would fight in a recording situation. I would NOT use it to play country, metal or surf and was just wondering how it holds up functioning as a “normal” rhythm guitar or lead for alternative/indie/rock styles. Have you ever worked with bands that use both baritone guitar and bass in this way, either as a drums/bass/guitar three-piece or a drums/bass/two-guitars quartet? If so, what were the pros and cons of that situation? Cory Mathews
Just wanted to drop you guys a note and say that I’ve been reading for several issues now and I love the magazine. It’s a great service you’re providing here, and it never fails to inspire ideas and get the creative juices flowing. Love the reviews and articles. I continue to be amazed by how many people write in to say how they love the magazine - and then tell you what you’re doing wrong and how you’ve sold out or something. Wow. But I guess you must be okay with that or you wouldn’t continue to publish them in every issue. Anyway, I just wanted to send you an email that told you how awesome you were doing, without then telling you how much better you could be doing it. Keep it coming! John Caparoon
In response to the criticism letters in #58 regarding Tape Op’s gear reviews, I’d like to say that I get a lot out of them. There are usually a few reviews per issue that get me excited about something, but they’re often out of my price range. Many of the reviews are for things I don’t think I’d want or need for some time yet. Sometimes there are items reviewed that I don’t even understand. But I read them all anyway, and you know what? With each issue of Tape Op, I feel like I have a better idea of what gear I “need” next, what the gear does and what I Okay, we’ll print one nice letter so we feel better about should be listening for when the time comes. So I very ourselves. -LC much appreciate the reviews as they are. Ty Hodson Fuck you and your yuppie fucking magazine! Steve Barakat Hello my friend Larry, can you help me? I want to
I applaud your patience.
buy a Neumann U 87 Ai and I don’t know what pre work well with the U 87 for recording vocals. I was thinking of buying the Focusrite ISA430. It’s good, but might make the vocals too bright because ISA is not analog. Sorry my English. If you can tell me for you what is the pre who works well with Newman U 87 Ai. Victor Ventura
16/Tape Op#60/Letters(continued on page 18)
Ah, back to normal! -LC Seems like there are quite a few Tape Op’ers using the Tascam 388. I created a track sheet for it so you can archive your mix settings. Just go to www.thehabitat.info/Tascam388_TrackSheet.pdf. Print it out on 11x17 paper and you should be good to go. Roy Silverstein
Thanks for your article on Matthew Herbert. Both Herbert and Matmos are prominent examples of a deeply personal approach to electronic music production. In club music there are quite a few artists using field recording as a way to generate unusual musical sounds. One need not look further than respected techno net-label Unfoundsound to get one’s feet wet (www.unfoundsoundrecords.com, techno skeptics may want to start with Ezekiel Honig’s release). I think it’s important to remember that the musicians rising to the top are not those who believe combining preset loops makes music. Good electronic music is made with the utmost focus by musicians with ideas. If you keep your ears open there is a wealth of deeply considered electronic music, some of which uses familiar drum sounds like the TR-808. Let’s not confuse the use of presets generally with the use of a proven classic instrument such as the 808. Guitarists may choose a Les Paul because there is no other sound in the world they love more. There is a traditional instrument there, but imaginative music can be made with the instrument. That tension between tradition and imaginative sound exploration is a recurring theme in the pages of Tape Op, and it’s rare (and interesting) to read about someone solely focused on the latter. David Last Nice piece on Bill Bottrell. He is a great guy, the finest in every way. He has always been gracious about speaking of his beginning at my studio and I am proud to have known him. Please give him my best regards. Also thank Matt for his excellent interview. Your magazine is excellent. Del Casher (Kasher/Kacher)
18/Tape Op#60/Letters(Fin.)
Were you so damn expensive until the big named artists recorded at your studio? I can’t imagine Elliott Smith having enough money to record the two albums [New Moon] with the $300+ price. Just curious. Ryan Hanson Wow. I hope you don’t always start off conversations with such a nasty attitude. If you’re just curious, there are nicer ways to ask. I’ll answer you anyway, just to educate you, but think before you accuse someone who’s spent their life creating music and recording others of only being in it for the money. How about a couple of points? Elliott recorded most of New Moon in home studios. Three songs were done at Jackpot!, in off hours. If an artist asked me to mix a homerecorded album like Elliott’s I would be happy to. I turn around sessions like that fast and it wouldn’t be too expensive. Jackpot! is in a totally different location now, built from the ground up as a studio, much bigger and the rent’s doubled. To keep it running I had to hire a studio manger (I spend most of my time working on Tape Op). I never charged Elliott because he was helping build the studio and helped me out with gear and cash. I was charging $250 a day at the beginning - including engineer. We had so much less gear ten years ago it’s not even funny. Compare Jackpot!’s rates to any other local studio. By the way, who are the “big named artists” I’ve recorded? Do you think recording Sleater-Kinney leads to some big money jobs? I’ve never really made a consistent living as a studio owner. At this point I am over $50,000 in debt with the recent studio move and I won’t make this back from the studio for years. I love music. I never started this to get rich or to fuck over artists. If I had, I would say I’ve failed on both counts. People who are driven to get their music out there (like Elliott was) make it happen for themselves instead of accusing others of some misdeed. Elliott did drywall mudding and worked in pizza shops while playing music for years. And his first record was recorded on a 4-track cassette. -LC
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TapeOpCon2007
“Of the dozen plus annual shows that I attend, TapeOpCon is by far the best show of the year, one I look forward to and enjoy.” -Russ Berger, Russ Berger Design Group
Held at the Hilton El Conquistador Resort in Tucson, Arizona on June 810th this past month, the sixth annual and final TapeOpCon proved to be an educational and entertaining event indeed. Advice, talent and brainstorming sessions flowed through five main panels, 36 workshops, nine Pot Luck Studio sessions and more. On Friday, Club Congress and The Rialto Theatre hosted a New Orleans benefit with Rebirth Brass Band, Mitch Easter and many others plus some good Creole food. Saturday morning’s “Classical Recording” workshop saw Linda Ronstadt dropping in to banter with her long time collaborator George Massenburg! Saturday night brought a fantastic free concert by the pool, featuring Calexico, DeVotchKa and John Vanderslice. Then O’Malley Jones and the James Brown revue (featuring Geoff Daking, Greg Gualteri (Pendulum Audio, Anamod) and Dave Amels (Bomb Factory, Anamod)) performed Live at the Apollo 1962 in its entirety, playing their last note around 2 a.m., showing the kids how to play for nearly four hours. Truly a special event. After Sunday night’s “More Records that Made Me Want to Record” moderator Mark Rubel called up the legendary Les Paul and led us in a sing-a-long of “Happy Birthday”. Couldn’t be a better end than that! For the past six years, Tape Op Magazine has partnered with conference director Craig Schumacher to host TapeOpCon. This year’s event was an amazing event but also the last of this run. This may seem like an odd choice of actions, as the event is always successful in attracting some of the most creative and forward-thinking producers, engineers, musicians, exhibitors, sponsors and panelists around, and is a highly enjoyable time for all involved. Tape Op’s reasons for this change are complex. With my partner John Baccigaluppi we handle the constant editing, publishing and running of Tape Op Magazine, which this spring also launched a branch in London to handle publishing, UK/EU subscriptions and related advertising. We are also working on a series of books compiling the back issues of our magazine. For over a year I have seen many changes in my own life. A personal move to southeast Arizona, where my girlfriend and I purchased a home to renovate, led right into to a move for my studio (Jackpot! Recording) to a new building in Portland, Oregon. I also began work as an archivist for the estate of Elliott Smith, a job I am just beginning to tackle in full and foresee taking up a large amount of my time. What this leads to is a question of time and energy - what do I excel at and want to do on a daily basis? Given the monthly deadlines I already cope with, layering a year-long deadline for the conference on top of it was just more work than I could handle or do to the best of my abilities. As I kept thinking about it - what did I really want to do with my time? - I decided that working on Tape Op Magazine, owning a studio, making albums (which I haven’t been able to do in eight months) and working on Elliott’s archiving were enough recording-related tasks in my life. I decided that helping run and putting my magazine’s name on an event - even a successful, enjoyable and positive event like TapeOpCon - isn’t something I have the time or drive to do anymore. Six great years of TapeOpCon sit behind us. I hold many friendships that have been made at or reinforced through this venture dear to my heart, and have always been thankful for all the work everyone has put into this event. Given all the experience he initially brought to the table and has gained over these last years, TapeOpCon director Craig Schumacher is now poised to bring a new-yetfamiliar recording related event back to the city of New Orleans in summer 2008. Me? I’ll take a quick breather and then jump back in and try to catch up with my own life! -Larry Crane
An ending...
...and a new beginning: After six great years it’s time to take this conference to the next level and to grow it and include more people and more voices in the audio community. Next year we will return to New Orleans and do a similar conference, but with a new name. I am very passionate about bringing it back to New Orleans, a city which has been very good to us. Bringing the conference to New Orleans in 2004 and 2005 allowed us to expand the conference content and the experience and was a good fit for our attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, and panelists. Post Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still a great music city and is still a perfect site for this conference. Our government has abdicated its responsibility to New Orleans, and as a community of people who live for the music it’s on us to do what we can to help lift this great music city back up. Bringing our conference, our community and our business to New Orleans is one of the best things we can do. Thanks to all of you who’ve attended, and for making this the best event in the audio community. Thanks to Larry and John for everything they and their wonderful magazine has done - and for contributing to a vision of what a truly great audio conference could be. We look forward to continuing our relationship with Tape Op Magazine as a cornerstone sponsor in this conference and we also look forward to adding other significant and relevant organizations in our audio community. I hope we see you all in New Orleans in 2008. -Craig Schumacher John Vanderslice & Friends
Devotchka Photos by Skid Severson (1-3) and Debbie Daking (4)
20/Tape Op#60/TapeOpCon
“It’s like being on vacation with 500 of your friends! Everywhere you turn there’s someone interesting to talk to about music and recording.” -Maureen Droney, Producers & Engineers Wing/The Recording Academy “TapeOpCon... what can I say? Relaxing, informative, good networking, lotsa fun... Work should be this good!” Francis Manzella, FM Design Ltd “TapeOpCon is a wonderful, kind of unnamable, indescribable thing. It’s not like any other thing that any of us do. The faith and passion you see at TapeOpCon make Joan of Arc seem like Friedrich Nietzsche by comparison. For some reason we want to do it again and again.” -George Massenburg “It was encouraging to see so many people of all age ranges and musical styles getting together after the apocalypse. This bodes well for the future of the music business.” -Sally Browder “If a kid’s going to smoke pot, we may as well teach them how to roll the joint right.” -Garrett Haines on the Mastering in the Box workshop. “I think TapeOpCon serves a purpose far removed from just gear or the technical, it gives us a sense of community that would never otherwise exist if not for the hard work in planning and putting on such an event.” -Ross Hogarth “You just can’t beat talking about gain structure and distortion while in a hot tub.” -Hillary Johnson “I met a lot of great people from all over who where happy as hell to be a part of the thing.” -Eric Ambel “The TapeOpCon reminds me of the scene in Muppets In Space in which Gonzo the Great is reunited with his people, other odd tufted beaked creatures - it’s a pleasure to gather annually with our people (normally dispersed in caves), to immerse ourselves in talking about music, recording and their arcana for three days straight!” -Mark Rubel “Only a legendary guitar hero like Pete Anderson could set the state of digital recording back ten years with his personal preference for older digital systems.” -Joe Chiccarelli “Irodeahorse,rodethewaterslide,touredBiosphere2, ate fabulous Ecuadorian food, and got a great massage... Recording, what’s that?!” -Steve Silverstein “No superlative is adequate.” -Don Zientara
Calexico
O’Malley Jones & The Geoff Daking Band
Behind The Gear This Issue’s Man of Wunder
Mike Castoro by Mike Jasper, photo by Max Cooper
happening. So I got a Small Business Administration SBA loan - this was during the Clinton Administration - and it was probably the best thing I ever did. It’s a government guaranteed loan. It’s hard to get a straight bank loan without collateral, but with the SBA loan they looked at my last three years of tax forms and they asked me what my five year projection was going to be, so I projected very big. They gave me a good-sized credit line and I went wild - I spent it all in about a month. Because I loved microphones, I bought way too many.
What kind of mics did you buy for Misty Hill Audio?
Mike Castoro, the 43-year-old owner and creator of Wunder Audio, lives quietly with his wife and two kids in the northern hills of Austin, Texas. Originally from upstate New York, he spent his junior high and high school years in Florida, then moved to Austin during the ’80s to attend the University of Texas, where he earned a BA in recording engineering. Shortly after graduation, he started Stardog Studio as a modest, 4-track cassette facility, and within a decade grew it to a 24-track analog museum for vintage gear rife with Pultecs, Fairchilds, Neve, Neumanns and at least a half dozen Mellotrons - the tape-based keyboard popularized by The Beatles and the Moody Blues. After six years of running a successful studio, he branched out and became a vintage gear broker when he started a company called Misty Hill Audio. In the late 1990s, he started manufacturing his own line of pro audio equipment under the Wunder Audio banner. How is the CM7-GT mic different from and similar to the CM7 microphone?
So are you approaching the GT as a new mic entirely? Exactly. We’re doing a new mic from scratch, so we don’t have to reverse engineer everything. On the GT, there’s probably two thirds the parts of the CM7. For example, on the CM7, if you take off the grille, the capsule travels with it - it’s connected. But if you take the grille off the GT, the capsule stays on the body of the mic. Just that one part of the equation means the GT has a lot fewer parts and lower costs. Another example is that the connector on the bottom of the CM7 is a U47-type Tuchel. On the GT we didn’t want to compromise too much and use an XLR, we used a 3/4 size Tuchel like you see on a U67 or an M269.
Any other differences between the two mics?
Neumann U47s of course, along with CMV563s, RFT 7151 bottle mics, Schoeps, and AKGs. I actually blew more money than I got from my SBA loan. It was about $100,000 and I spent $116,000. I even dipped into my credit card. I wasn’t very frugal, so I sold some of the stuff and realized I could make a little profit by buying and selling vintage gear. So I started a business called Misty Hill Audio where I did that consistently for about six years. Eventually, I actually earned a huge rack of vintage gear - Pultecs, Fairchilds, Studer tape machines and Neve boards. I guess I was pretty good at what I did, because I made a lot of contacts across the country and overseas to find gear. The catch is you have to know how to tech your own gear, which I was able to do. I would buy U47s in any condition - I didn’t care if they worked or not, because I knew you’d never find one that was perfect. I always said they came in varying degrees of decay. As long as all the parts were there, if it wasn’t working, fine. I did lose money on deals a few times, especially when I started trading on eBay. eBay killed many vintage broker careers, but fortunately I did most of this from 1997 to 2003, before eBay got so big - although I was competing with eBay at the end.
Obviously, the heart of the GT is the glass tube, which is what GT stands for. We’re using a NOS Telefunken glass tube that basically replaced the VF and EF14 back in 1960 when they went to glass tubes and stopped making the metal tube. Since it has the glass housing, theoretically the microphonics should be a bit better than the metal, and I’m able to find a lot more really How did you get into making your good quality tubes because I have thousands to own mics? choose from. Tubes make the biggest difference I bought my first U47 in 1997, and it was in such bad sonically between the two mics. The EF14 has finer condition that I wanted to make a new body for that detail (I think) than the glass tube and 3 dB more mic. The grille was dented in and it looked like an old output. So when you do a shootout between the two rusted pipe. Surprisingly, it sounded pretty good, and mics, they’re going to sound pretty identical if you set when I took it apart I had visions of being able to mill the mic pre to 3 dB more gain on the GT. The extra the aluminum and reconstruct the mic again from noise floor is equalized by the lower noise from the scratch. In my mind, it didn’t seem like so tough an glass tube - the metal tubes tend to be noisier, even ordeal - but it sure was. I figured if the U47 was made though they provide better detail. The other thing I 50 years ago, then there would be no reason it noticed is that when I tried some loud, shouting type couldn’t be done now. One of my uphill battles was vocals the CM7 had a fuller sound than the GT, but trying to get the right metal kit for the mic so I could since I did one take, I don’t have a well-rounded sell it for $5,000. Most of the metal workers were opinion of that yet. Time will tell. It’s basically the telling me each metal kit would cost $5,000 itself. It same circuit, although not point-to-point like the took a long time to find a kit at a price point where it CM7. One engineer thought that the difference would be feasible to build a mic and sell it for $5,000. between the CM7 and the GT was that vocals sounded I talked to other manufacturers who wanted to do closer, more intimate on the CM7. what I was doing, and they told me the target price How did you go from musician/studio would have to be $12 to $15,000 dollars.
Well, they’re similar especially if you order the GT with the M7 capsule instead of the K47 capsule. The capsule, the grille and the transformer are all going to be identical. The main difference is the GT has no pattern switch on the chrome top grille like a U47 would have - it’s on the power supply unit instead. So the cardioid is a perfect cardioid on the U47 or CM7, but when you change patterns using a power supply there’s always variation plus or minus by a tiny percent. Still, the C12 and the M49 also change polar patterns from the power supply, and those are owner to pro audio manufacturer? certainly well-accepted mics. Also, the metal work on So initially you were interested in the GT isn’t historically correct like it is in the CM7, I started Stardog Studio as a singer-songwriter looking to repairing the U47s you already had, record his own stuff. All I really had was a four-track where it’s as close as possible to an authentic U47. It but then you took it a step further cassette recorder and a Realistic microphone. I comes from the same high quality metal shop, but it’s and decided to build your own? couldn’t afford better stuff, but I was well aware there made of different parts and a lot simpler. We don’t Right, except initially I only wanted to make ten of them. was better stuff out there. I always used to say that have to replicate every tiny screw, piece of rubber and I wanted to make a body to repair that first mic I we would reinvest ten percent of the studio profit into PVC in the U47. owned, and then build nine more from scratch. In the new gear, but after six years I realized that wasn’t
22/Tape Op#60/Mr. Castoro/(continues on page 24)
PEQ1s too. Right now you can only go to -18, and with first year, from 2003 to 2004, I only sold eight CM7s the output pot on the PAFOUR, you’ll have a lot more total. Even after the third year, I was selling less than flexibility for gain structuring, both input and output. 30 per year. It takes a long time to make up your investment, but I didn’t care - I just wanted the mic so Why aren’t there more microphone repair techs? I could use it. And I always wanted parts for U47s. I’d think, “I wish I had a tube socket”, or “I wish I had a It’s a scary thing, and back in my early days of being a studio owner I was frightened about a piece of gear bottom bell with a cable connector” or “I wish I had the breaking. Fortunately I had a lot of contacts out of the U47 grille.” And people were also buying parts from me, UK who were some of the best recording console and and still do so today. The parts I use for the CM7 you can tape machine technicians in the world and I used to also use to replace parts in the U47 - they fit perfectly have them come over to my house for an extended stay on the original mic and there aren’t too many and teach me how to fix equipment. That went on pretty reproductions you can say that about. You also make a CM12, which is patterned heavily from 1998 to 2000. We were doing stuff like after the AKG C12, but we don’t hear joining two consoles together and recapping tape much about that one. Why? machines. That was my apprenticeship, although I The reason you don’t hear about it is for the same reason always repaired things even when I was a kid. I used to the CM7 was flying under the radar for a few years. I don’t send my mics off to get repaired, and believe me, I send that many mics out for review, and when a mic is in wasn’t always happy with the way they were repaired. I what I call the pioneering period - when there are not guess by reverse engineering and disassembling things I many sales happening - it’s hard to keep extra mics to got to know how they worked. I don’t think anybody send out for review. The CM12s are about two years taught me how to fix mics; I just did it on my own. I behind the CM7, and I only build up five at a time. That guess I’m from the school of mic repairmen who learned said, a lot of people have them, and some people even by taking everything apart. With any piece of vintage own pairs of them. They’re pretty much a dead ringer for gear I buy, I disassemble it all the way and reassemble the C12. If you had the mic opened up next to an original it before I even turn it on. I don’t know if that’s a C12, you’d never be able to tell the difference except for problem I have or not, but even if it’s a Mellotron or the color of the capacitors. Hammond organ, I never plug it in before I take it apart.
You also manufacture the PEQ1, PEQ1R, What does the future of Wunder Audio PAFOUR and the new Wunderbar. Are look like? these different versions of the same I have about a half dozen full time people working for preamp design? Wunder, and I have independent contractors who might The PEQ1, 1R and PAFOUR are all the same preamp design. Of course the PAFOUR doesn’t have EQ like the others. They’re like a very vague replica of the old Allotrope modules. When I say vague, there’s about eight years of work starting from the reproduction to where we are now. We did change resister and capacitor values, and improved the slew rate from 5 volts per microsecond to 22 volts per microsecond, so it’s a 44 times faster slew rate.
What’s the slew rate?
spend half a year’s time working for us, whether it’s a machinist, a mechanical engineer or electronic engineer. Those are basically the three kinds of workers we need help from. The whole concept of Wunder Audio is to be a boutique company, so growing into a large company goes against the grain. Some of the products are limited, such as the CM7. There are a finite number of EF14 tubes, and there are a finite number of capsules that M7 expert Siegfried Thiersch - who is now in his 70s - can make. We’ve got the [mixing] boards coming out, the Wunderbar, but we’re only going to make 20 per year for four or five years at the most. Everything that’s coming out in the future has been planned and prototyped, but they aren’t out yet. One of them is a recreation of the Western Electric mic pre. I have a 12-channel Western Electric board, which is the best tube mic pre I’ve ever heard. The replica will come out as a module for a board and as a two-channel mic rack piece. Another component is the Wunder Audio compressor, a solid state compressor based on the PEQ1 topology. It’ll be like a Neve 2254, but with the Wunder transformers and amplifier stages. It’ll have faster attack and release times. Also, we’re coming out with a small diaphragm tube microphone, kind of like a KM54. That’s going to be a really nice little mic and should be out in 2008. We also have the M49 replica called the CM49 available in limited runs. It’s being produced very slowly. Finally, there will be a one-channel version of the PAFOUR, and we’re also going to have a four band EQ coming out. If we were a large company with a lot of capital, I guess our products would be ready in a month, but it’ll be another two years before everything is out. Everything will have its turn. r
It’s just the rise time of the signal, and when it’s a lot quicker it sounds more natural and realistic on the high end. That’s the difference between the PEQ1 and PEQ1 with the Revision A mod. With the PAFOUR we improved the output stage a little bit. We added a five watt power amp right before it goes to the output transformer. What that does is it drives a low impedance load better, such as a vintage compressor that has transformer inputs. A lot of modern equipment will have a 10 K input impedance, while old vintage stuff might have a 600ohm impedance. The PEQ1 is now into a revision C. We added a discrete active HP filter, a much higher quality gain switch, a custom design that has three times the gold contact area on each switch position, and we’re replacing the push button switches with the light pipe switches that are found on the Wunderbar console. Even the enclosures will have improved metal work, with thicker faceplates and tack welding so everything’s beefier. The PC boards have been expanded from twosided to four-sided. We’re going to have a radio frequency filter that can be added or not added with a jumper. The Rev C is going to be the epitome of the PEQ1 and the PAFOUR. Also, the PAFOUR will have hi-pass www.wunderaudio.com filters and output pots, along with a lower input gain that will work like a pad and go down to -24 dB, which is a pretty good pad. We’ll be doing that last mod on the
24/Tape Op#60/Mr. Castoro/(Fin.)
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My first encounter with the sprawling collection of keyboards, pianos, British-made guitar amplifiers and homemade walls that is Breakglass Studios happened when I had the opportunity to sit in on a session for the band Shoot the Moon. I opened the door at the end of the hall in an otherwise nondescript building in Montreal’s Little Italy to find the studio’s tape library. Reels of 2-inch and quarter-inch tape sat in their boxes, with names like Islands, Besnard Lakes, and Sunset Rubdown written on the spines. I made my way further in and opened the door to the control room, where the band was tracking vocals while Jace Lasek sat at the console. Lasek and his business partner/co-engineer Dave Smith met in high school in Regina, Saskatchewan. After school, they moved to the west coast before realizing that if they wanted to have their own studio space, they would have to escape the high cost of living in Vancouver. They settled in Montreal in late ’99. At the time, Montreal was at the tail end of a long recession, and one could easily get by cheaply. Since then, they’ve worked on albums and songs by the aforementioned bands, as well as Wolf Parade, Bell Orchestre and Destroyer, among others. Along the way they have learned, often through trial and error, how to get the most out of their haphazard collection of recording gear, how to build walls and reflection-free zones and how to build and mod their own gear. Most importantly, they have honed their abilities, knowing as Jace puts it, “When to be invisible, and when to step up and provide support to the band.” This is their stated purpose: helping bands get the most they can out of the studio environment.
Jace Lasek and Dave Smith: Breaking Glass in Montreal by Martin Horn
26/Tape Op#60/Mr. Lacek &
Mr. Smith/(Continued on page 28)
In this control room you have a 24channel Ward-Beck broadcast console, Studer 16-track and 2-track reel-to-reels, Radar and Pro Tools. What do you usually use for tracking? Jace: It depends how big the project is. Some bands come in and want to limit themselves to the 16-track, so I’ve mixed entire projects on the Ward-Beck using outboard gear. Other bands that are doing something a little more complex will fill up the 16-track, and I’ll dump it into the Radar. Some bands don’t care about tape, so they’ll go straight to Radar, and then we can mix in Pro Tools if they want. We want to make sure that we are always capable of doing whatever people need. If it’s just a straight rock band with a couple of guitars and vocals then I can say, “Let’s do it on the 16-track and mix on the console.” For some of the more involved stuff, if they’re going to be adding violins and they want to build up 40 tracks of stuff, we’re going to have to mix in Pro Tools, though I know mixing on the console would probably result in a better product. If I can get the project down to 24 tracks, get it back on the Radar with all the edits done and then pass it through the console to the Studer 2-track, I will.
shitloads of noise, and I just sit there and sing with J: The Sunset Rubdown record was mixed by Spencer the headphones on. I guess that was the kind of [Krug, singer for Sunset Rubdown]. approach that Steve was looking for. D: He tracked it here and then took it home and mixed it in an afternoon or something. He called me after and You can afford to be less conservative said,” You’re gonna hate it, you’re gonna hate my mix.” when it’s your own project. J: We tracked most of that live-off-the-floor and straight J: Yeah. The other thing is I don’t have a lot of time into the 16-track. when I’m making Besnard records because it’s usually D: I bounced it onto Radar and he took those files home. between jobs. I throw a mic up and get it down, so The difference in sound between those two records the sound isn’t going to be as hi-fi. I can’t put ten probably has more to do with who mixed it. Mark Lawson mics on the drums. I’ve just gotta hope that the one mixed Return to the Sea and Spencer mixed Shut Up I mic I do use is not going to peak out. Am Dreaming. They also both used their own gear to D: It think stuff like that sounds better anyway. I tend You have an enormous live room, mix, so that probably accounts for a lot of the difference. to believe that the more obsessive and anal you are, especially considering the size of most the worse off it’s going to sound - to a degree at So the characteristic sound of those tracking rooms in studios these days. least. Obviously this is not always the case. J: Our room is amazing for strings and horns. albums isn’t necessarily a result of It doesn’t seem like you have any you making it sound that way. Do you J: There is something to be said about a sense of urgency. Sometimes it translates onto the record. You can tell treatment on the walls. attempt to get a neutral sound when when something’s been slapped together really quickly. J: The shape of the control room we built adjoining the you are tracking? There’s something really cool about that. All the old live room means that by default, there are no parallel J: There are certain things that I like to do and prefer to records from the fifties and sixties were done very walls in the live room. Even if the walls were parallel do, but I’m not going to force my opinion on people. quickly, and recorded to 2-track or to 4-track. There are it would be okay since the room is big enough. I want them to feel like they’re making a record as obviously lots of errors. Something will be too loud or D: Due to the fact that the room’s not finished, there opposed to me making a record and forcing them to pop out, but I love that stuff. I guess I use the studio are gaping holes all over the place. There are lots of have my sound. as a giant 4-track. I just keep layering things, because places for the sound to get lost. I think if we had So it’s not like a Prince production. that’s how I always used to use my Tascam 4-track. all the doors in, we’d probably have to put in some J: Yeah exactly. [laughs] But you know, there are times when There’s always going to be errors in the 4-track format. kind of treatment. people come in and they’ll say that they want me to put Whenever you bounce, there’s going to be something my stamp on it. I’m working with Steve Ramsay right now Do you do a lot of live-off-the-floor that’s bounced too high or too low, so you have to (the guitarist for Stars) on a project called Young Galaxy, recording? compensate for that. I love that about it. and he’s basically said “You can help me with the J: Because our live room is so big, we do a lot of live arrangements, and you can play on it if you want and I Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards had tracking that some studios don’t want to do. We do want you to build it in the way you would your own have to tell bands that if you want to record live-offthe “Honor thy mistake as hidden records.” So this is kind of the first time I’ve been able to the-floor, what you’re going to hear coming out of the intention.” I always try to keep that build a project from the ground up, and I’m making the monitors is pretty much how its going be, but we’ll let in mind in my own work. decisions as far as sound goes. He obviously has the final J: In my experience, a lot of the bands don’t want to them set up as they would if they were rehearsing. We’ll say, and I never impose anything on him, but since he’s put up baffles if there are any obvious problems. experiment. They’re paying, and they don’t want to given me the opportunity make decisions sometimes I’ll D: I like to say to bands, “Go set up and make it sound spend time on something that might not work. They say “Well, I think this is a really good idea. You can throw how you want it to sound in the room”, and just deal want to get in and get out. it out later, but lets just put it on now.” with the bleed for better or for worse, but make sure D: It’s a drag. I’ve been listening to “I Am the Walrus” they’re okay with that from the beginning. The funny D: Steve liked your record and he wanted you to bring a lot lately, and it seems so far away from what that kind of an idea to it. But I don’t think it sounds thing is, they always say they are, but when it comes anyone would try today. That was obviously the like a Besnard Lakes [Jace’s band] record. to mixing, they’ll ask for me to do something with the product of a lot of experimentation. It’s great when kick, for example. But the bass will be louder than the J: I think Besnard records sound terrible compared to bands do take the time and spend two weeks to the other stuff we’ve done here. kick in the kick mic, so I can’t. I don’t have too much track an album. Islands actually recorded a drum room to maneuver. We just have to let it be sometimes, What was it he was looking for? track on the roof. It’s not as experimental as John which I think sometimes gets you better results. Lennon wanting to be hung upside down and swung J: Besnard records are always really haphazardly put J: There was one project I did where the vocal mic together. It’s my opportunity to experiment with around to get a weird sound, but at least they’re actually became the basis for the whole mix because things that I couldn’t really ever do with a band. trying. I think there’s this trend towards it was a really hot condenser mic, and when the Sometimes I make mistakes when I’m making the documenting bands. My favorite records sound like singer wasn’t singing, the whole band was in the mic. Besnard records, but I never go back. For example, if records, not like a perfect mirror of the original I couldn’t just turn that off, so I built the mix around I do a drum track, it’s usually just one mic in the room performance. It’s a philosophy of capturing the this room mic that he was using as a vocal mic. It was - ‘cause when I do the Besnard stuff I’m alone. sound exactly how it is and that’s the record, as fun to mix because it was such a challenge. opposed to manipulating the sound in some way. I Whereas with Shoot the Moon you used ten mics on the drums. like it when people make their records a little I’ve noticed that the sound of the records coming out of this studio are fairly J: Yeah. I’ll put one mic in the room and record with different from what the band actually sounds like. diverse. For example, there’s a marked some compression, and when I’m mixing it, I’ll see What kinds of issues would you have difference between the sound of the drums need more, so I’ll overdub something else. recording drums on a roof? Return to the Sea by Islands and Shut D: No band would ever come in and let you use just one J: There are no reflections - it’s like an anechoic mic on the drums! Up I Am Dreaming by Sunset Rubdown. chamber. Once the sound leaves, its gone. Return to the Sea sounds unhyped, J: I know! So I’ll go back and record another drum track D: They were getting a slapback from a nearby building. over top of it and it’s fine. I’m just haphazardly almost the opposite of the Sunset It was a telemarketing office and a bunch of people putting it together. When I’m recording vocals for Rubdown record, which sounds like were watching them from the windows. It was a weird Besnard, I’m usually sitting at the console with an it’s using a lot of compression and it’s kind of rock star moment for J’aime [Tambeur, Islands’ SM57 running right into the space echo, so there’s got a kind of midrange grit to it. former drummer]. It sounded really cool. Dave: A lot of bands will come in and use the studio for tracking and then take the tracks home to mix, so a lot of the time mixing isn’t even an issue. J: It’s actually a lot of fun for the bands to mix on the board. The shitty thing about mixing in Pro Tools is that people are sitting in the back of the room for hours, watching me draw stupid little lines. We don’t have automation on this console, so when we’re mixing on it everybody’s right there helping with the mix, and they sort of feel like they’ve had part in it, like they’ve played their guitar or whatever one more time.
28/Tape Op#60/Mr. Lacek &
Mr. Smith/(Continued on page 29)
J: They built the tempo of the song around the reflection that was coming back. It’s an unreleased track off their album. They’ll probably release it as a b-side or something. Aside from that, I think almost all the drums on Return to the Sea were tracked in the dead room.
You guys build some of your own gear? J: The goal when we started this studio was similar to the Joe Meek philosophy, where he built his whole studio from scratch, down to the electronics. Dave’s doing a lot of research on how we can buy kits and build our own preamps and modify things. We’re really excited about that, but we have this ongoing argument. People come to the studio and have this preconceived notion that if it’s not Neve or API, it’s not good enough. We’re going to build this stuff that hopefully will sound as good, or maybe more interesting. But how are we going to have people know that we can get good sounds without these big names?
Bandshavecomeinandbeenuncom-fortablewiththefactthat you don’t have any of the big names in preamps? J: Yeah. Because the daily rate here is quite low, we’ll say to them, “If you want, you can rent stuff.” So a lot of bands do that and it makes them feel better. D: If we bought all the gear that all these people seem to want, we’d have to double our rates, at which point… J: No one would come. D: No one could afford to come. I think a lot of the bands deserve to have a great sound. I wish people would trust us a little more to be able to provide that. I think it would be really cool [if] the studio had its own custom stuff that we had voiced by component choice to suit our needs. It won’t be Neve or API, but hopefully it’ll sound good. I’d like if you could work it in somewhere that the Ward-Beck beats out API and Neve in A/B tests.
I can put that in verbatim! The Wolf Parade album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, was mixed here. D: That was early on. There were no walls here yet. J: We mixed it in the giant space. We started in our old space, and finished it here. It was hilarious. We had a little setup when this was just a raw five thousand squarefoot room.
I had read that they were unhappy with how it sounded before they came to you. J: They were unhappy with the way that Isaac [Brock, Modest Mouse] had mixed it, and they came here to mix it again. I think they just wanted to get their hands on it and make it their own again D: Didn’t Spencer take some of the tracks home? J: Yeah, they all had a huge hand in it. I think they just wanted to get their record back. They had always recorded in their own space. I think they felt a little disillusioned because it didn’t sound the way they were used to making themselves sound. D: With the Sunset Rubdown record, Spencer lamented the fact that it sounded like it was recorded in a studio. He would have, with hindsight, preferred recording it at home. That EP that Wolf Parade recorded themselves sounds amazing. J: If Arlen [Thompson, drummer for Wolf Parade] ever gets that Ward-Beck that he bought up and running, I think they’ll probably make their own records from now on. Going into a professional studio was an opportunity for them to see what it’s like to work in that kind of environment. I remember Spencer telling me that he was troubled by it. He was asking himself if they should take this opportunity or just make it themselves. D: Dan said to me, “The one lesson I learned out of all this is that having a room full of super-expensive gear doesn’t mean you’re going to make a good record.” J: I understand that people want to make it sound really cool because the concept of the album dictates that it sound a certain way, and that’s awesome, that’s fine… D: But you’re not necessarily going to make a great album because you have Neve preamps and a Neumann mic. r www.breakglass.ca
www.tapeop.com free subscriptions online! Please Support Our Advertisers/Tape Op#60/29
Joe Boyd “Only when the sonic image is right can I relax and enjoy the music.”
by Larry Crane photos by Alissa Anderson
When JÈ Boyd’s book Wh⁄e Bicycles came out laÌ year, I was exc⁄ed. Not only could I finally read more about this amazing record producer/label owner/manager, but there might be a chance to interview him for Tape Op. During JÈ’s WeÌ CoaÌ book tour we were able to Íend a lunch together at Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge, and I finally got to mÕt the man who recorded some of my all-time favor⁄e records. From Pink Floyd’s firÌ single, “Arnold Layne”, Richard and Linda `ompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, R.E.M.’s Fables of the ReconÌruÀion, moÌ of the Nick Drake catalog and early Fairport Convention, to some passionate and informed produÀion of world music albums, JÈ has helped create, release and guarantÕ the (sometimes gradual) success of many artiÌs. In some ways you could look at JÈ’s carÕr as flying under the radar or hidden behind the scenes, but even he has Úo slightly odd number one h⁄s, w⁄h “Dueling Banjos” Ïom the Deliverance soundtrack, and Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis”. Anyone w⁄h over 40 years in the music business is capable of losing his or her wonder of music, but w⁄h JÈ this is not the case. Yes, he’s Ìopped producing records and running a label, but w⁄h Wh⁄e Bicycles he tells eloquent tales of his adventures in music through the ’60s and ’70s. W⁄h his next book he will take us on a journey through world music - and I’ll be wa⁄ing patiently for this sure-to-be-fascinating tale.
kind of stuff, it was good to know beforehand what Jones made her record on Pro Tools originally and The one thing that really struck me with they had in mind - so you positioned the tracks right, Blue Note said, “We don’t like it.” So they went into the book is that everything that so you could bounce things to non-adjacent tracks. the studio with Arif Mardin to redo it. They were right. happens to you really comes from being You have to sort of plan ahead. We’d do something on It could’ve easily dropped like a stone, but that record a fan of music. I think one of the track one and we could then bounce it together with had that fantastic warmth and atmospherics to it that problems I’ve had with the music something else on track three or four, and then come you can only get when you’ve got more than one industry lately is that it just feels like back to two and then four. microphone open in the space at the same time, so it too many people in it are just doing a sounds three-dimensional. How did you end up finding Sound job, not coming at it with a large record In your book you mentioned working Techniques and engineer John Wood? collection and a passion for music. with The Incredible String Band and Good luck. When I took up my place at Elektra, I think the That may be true with the major labels, but I think for first thing I did - aside from some recording outside of doing overdubs, having access to an most people who work in the indie world, the rewards London - the first real session I did was that Eric 8-track, probably at that point. are so limited and chancy that most people I’ve met are pretty passionate about music.
The first time it was four.
Clapton thing [Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse].
That’s true. We’ll see what happens to You were taking a jump from two That was at Olympic [Studios]? different ways of working. Initially, I asked Bill Leader, who was this mentor friend of mine the major labels, anyway. and folk producer. I said I had to do this rock session what did you learn in that process? I don’t remember saying it, but [in] one of the interviews with a drum kit and everything. He knew Keith Grant I read I was welcoming the crisis in the music industry I don’t think there were generic lessons. Mistakes were individual and specific. You try putting a harmony on at Olympic and he said, “Call Keith.” So I just called saying, “The dinosaurs will slowly sink into the tar pits and it doesn’t work and you erase it and put up Keith and he said, “Sure.” That was falling on your and some of their cousins will turn into birds.” something else on. You put a pennywhistle on feet to do your first session with Keith Grant because There have been periods where major something and Robin [Williamson] or Mike [Heron] he is a great engineer. Jac [Holzman, Elektra] wasn’t labels worked fine, hand-in-hand would say, “Oh that works.” It was in the air. [In] ’67, just putting out Judy Collins and Phil Ochs records with the music. Your book documents Revolver was already out and the fact that The Beatles he built his label, in a way, on gimmicks. a certain era that definitely made a lot were working on Sgt. Pepper’s - and “Penny Lane” and What kind of gimmicks was he using? of sense - Elektra wasn’t part of a major “Strawberry Fields…” came out. It was in the drinking The thing that enabled him to stop writing ad copy or label in the same way it is now. Two water, those kinds of experiments. It was hugely fun whatever it was he was doing before was a series of things that make themselves apparent and it worked. They got it right away. records by Ed McCurdy called When Dalliance was in in the book are your early loves of jazz Flower (and Maidens Lost Their Heads)– basically bawdy and working with jazz musicians. In How did you feel your role changed as a songs. It was a guy with a Burl Ives kind of voice, record producer working in a my vision, that influenced the way strumming guitar going, “Hey ho, nonny, nonny, he situation built more around adding you recorded everything from then took the maiden into the green wood and turned her and judging overdubs to a take? on. It became more about looking for upside down” - and it sold tons! It was huge. He had a space and a performance and I didn’t think about it much. It was all whatever the this other idea that was probably okay - it was the signs situation needed. If I was recording Chris McGregor’s capturing something. of the zodiac [as] a series of easy listening records. sextet - that was one job. Doing Nick Drake was a It’s not just jazz. Certainly, jazz in general has only really There was an American arranger who Jac would completely different job because then you had to hire successfully been recorded that way, unlike other forms commission every six months and he would put out musicians to come in and join him. The Fairport of music. I don’t think there was a question of taking sounds of Libra, you know - an instrumental record that Convention - the recording process changes a lot a practice that applied to jazz and trying to apply it to was supposed evoke Libras. In those days a lot of string whether you have a drum kit or not. All the problems other things. I got through the mid-’60s until 4-track players were much cheaper and better than now. You are different. With The [Incredible] String Band you tape came in. That was the way all music was made. could get London Philharmonic players for twelve had tremendous flexibility because there was no drum That’s true. That kind of dictates pounds for a two hour session. They were probably up kit, so there’s a lot of sonic space it’s open. A the process. to eighty-five dollars in America. He always did his drummer playing a kit takes up a lot of space and if Les Paul did some tricks, but they were bouncing stuff back string sessions in Sound Techniques. Jac’s doing these you put an overdub in, it has to assert itself. Whereas and forth. That was an aberration rather than a practice. sessions for the next three days and he was going to be Robin, on the first track of Hangman’s Beautiful I guess now we take layering and Daughter [“Koeeoaddi There”] where he sings, at this studio, “Here’s the address, take down four creating in that fashion for granted. “Skating on happy valley pond” – he came up with hundred pounds in cash to pay the musicians” - because The “Wall of Sound” was live. He [Spector] had three [an] idea. He just said, “I’d like to try this.” He had you had to pay the musicians in cash. I walked in and pianos in the studio. He had twelve guitars in the little finger cymbals and he just rubbed them and it I liked the feel of the place and I met John. I think I studio. He had the girls in the vocal booth live. sounds like a skate on ice, or you surmise skates on had to come down the next day again and there was a What I responded to was you talking ice. He just went downstairs and John [Wood] set up break and everybody was getting their money and about looking for recording spaces all the microphones. I think there was a track that counting it out and getting cups of tea and I started and how that creates part of the had something on it from a previous verse, and he’s talking to John. By that time I had decided I was going environment, and making sure going to have to put something else on it the next to do a session and I was thinking I might do it in Bill something happened on the floor. verse. So we did part of that then did “shhh shh Leader’s kitchen [where many folk records were done], That is one of the problems I have with a lot of shhh” [sound of the finger cymbals] and put echo but I already had a few misgivings. I loved Bill and I contemporary recording. You don’t feel like it is taking onto the mix - they just really enjoyed the process. loved what he did, but I wanted to set the record that place in a room. It’s taking place in cyberspace or in My role was to tell them, “Look, you can do this. I was going to do apart. The kind of recording he did – an electronic environment - close mic’ing in a dead Think of an instrument to put on to add to this tune” they were wonderful recordings, but sonically they were space. If you want atmosphere, you dial it up. I keep or whatever. If Robin would say, “I want to put on a little flat. I was sort of in the background thinking, quoting these two examples, but I think they’re good four layers of this instrument”, I would say, “Well, I “What am I going to do? I don’t want to hurt Bill’s examples: Buena Vista Social Club and Norah Jones – don’t think it would sound so good.” We would have feelings.” I mentioned it to John Wood. “Would you they really sound as though they’ve been made in a to bounce it back and forth. There were also logistical ever think of doing this record with fiddle and guitar?” space. I don’t personally think they would’ve been things like, once you learned it and started doing this and John said, “Yeah, great, sure! Come on down.” He that successful if they hadn’t sounded like that. Norah Mr. Boyd (continued on page 32)/Tape Op#60/31
want to cut it off and have bird songs going into gave me good rates and I liked going there - it sounded I had a horror of that. Sometimes musicians would say, this next track.” It’s an absolute – you can tell it’s a good. The next thing was the Incredible String Band’s “Let’s put a phased guitar panning from right to scissors [cut]. It’s not musical. It’s technical and I first record. John had never heard any of this stuff left.” That kind of shit. There may be something on hate it. I said, “No, no, no. We can’t do this.” They before. He was a classical guy - he loved violin concertos The Incredible String Band – there was one thing said, “Yes, yes, yes, we must do this. This is the and things like that - and we’re playing things like this where they wanted the voice to go left to right very concept. This is what we want to do.” In the end, I and he was like, “Wow. Let’s try putting the mic here. slowly. The one argument like that that I lost, which always felt that for artists’ records, I can argue a lot Let’s try this kind of a mic.” It just grew from there. He I really regret that still drives me nuts when I hear and I would often fight against things, but at the learned a lot about this music from me and I learned it - I tried to look for the tape to see if I could undo end of the day I couldn’t convince an artist that this about recording and sound from him. it - was Wee Tam and The Big Huge, an Incredible was [the way]. I might say, “Do it my way and if it String Band record has a track that I love – it used I like your description of your working doesn’t work, we’ll try it your way.” Sometimes, to be their closing track in their concerts called methods with John and overlapping a every once in a while there were situations where an “Maya”, and they end with this coda sort of flourish little bit in the production areas. He artist would say, “I’ve heard it your way and I still and it all grinds to a halt. Mike plays sitar. It’s a would not feel timid to say something want to do it my way.” That was one of them. It still rousing chorus. It’s great and you hear it either once nor you vice-versa. It’s hard to drives me nuts. I can’t stand to listen to it. or twice – I can’t remember if there’s one or two develop that sometimes. Someone verses, but you hear it at least once, if not twice all What would you have decided, to go thinks, “Well, I’m just the engineer. the way through and then the third verse, as it’s just naturally where the music was going? If they’re only asking me to be the getting to that climax, they said, “Okay, now we Yeah - where it ends in a live show. engineer, I’m not going to say
something.” Was it just a rare combination of personalities? Yes. John is a distinct personality and I think he has always been. I think it was fortunate for him that he found me just as much as it was that I found him, because I think that he probably was not the best front foot forward for the studio. He’s a grumpy, curmudgeonly guy who does speak his mind. He was used to doing typical commercial stuff that wasn’t very interesting and he’d keep his mouth shut. He was not one to suffer fools gladly. If he had an idiot producer, he’d probably make them feel like they don’t want to come back - and to be fair, over the years there have been times when he and I have gone our separate ways when we have disagreed about stuff and it wasn’t shrugged off easily. He got out of the business, but he’s now getting back in a little bit. Jerry Boys came to work at a certain point, at ’68 or ’69 at Sound Techniques, and I was booking so much time. I was block booking – just give me this week and the next week, and then Thursday and Friday I’ll be away for four days and then I’ll book more time. John was part of that so he said, “I’m not doing all of this stuff.” He would take certain projects and say, “I’m doing these, but you could do this with Victor Gann, Jerry Boys or Roger [Mayer].” By that time we had three other engineers working there. I think Jerry is in a way temperamental and perfect and I think that John as a recording engineer might have done some things that were more original – but you couldn’t really choose between them. They were both great recording engineers.
`at is one of the problems I have w⁄h a lot of contemporary recording. You don’t fÕl like ⁄ is taking place in a room. It’s taking place in cyberÍace or in an eleÀronic environment...
Did you have different interactions with Jerry? Jerry is more prepared to shut up, but I never asked him to. I always asked his opinion. He was a little more, “What do you want? I’ll get it for you.” Jerry as a mixing engineer is fantastic. That’s a real strength of his. John, too – I got spoiled working with Jerry. Now I feel like the ideal thing would be to go make a record with John and then take it in to mix with Jerry.
Photos from Joe’s book reading at Time Tested Books in Sacramento, CA, March 19, 2007
You talk a little bit in the book about the lack of sixties trappings on the recordings, like clichéd overuses of things. Was that a conscious decision at the time?
32/Tape Op#60/Mr. Boyd/(Continued on page 34)
In the ’80s you ended up doing R.E.M.’s Which - I guess they were feeling that way. To me, it rains all the time – so what? I guess it did affect them. With third record [Fables of the Natalie and the 10,000 Maniacs, that record has Reconstruction] and 10,000 Maniacs disappeared. It’s not even on CD [Wishing Chair]. I [The Wishing Chair] – these American really liked that album. One of the things that bands were showing up in the UK to happened with both albums - and it took me a while record with you. I remember you had to digest this information - I think I sensed it at the some comments at the time going, “I time, but when I look back on those records – this is don’t know why these people are slightly the flaw in my philosophy that I espoused of coming over here and asking to work trying to do everything live in the studio. I realized with me.” What are your feelings that I was very spoiled. I worked with a lot of fantastic looking back on that era for you? Great experiences. I have great respect for R.E.M. – both groups – particularly R.E.M., as an organization, were quite extraordinarily impressive. The way that they were together and the way with the management – that was before their problems with Jefferson [Holt, manager] and the six of them were very much a unit. The fact that they didn’t take advances from the label - they were very much in control of their own career. I just thought these guys were totally on it. I had never met a young rock band with such a mature attitude towards everything. I haven’t really seen the guys from 10,000 Maniacs since then, but I stayed friends with Natalie [Merchant]. Mike Mills [R.E.M.] and I became good friends. It was a strange experience because I didn’t feel like I finished the [R.E.M.] record properly. I wasn’t happy with the mix - probably because I mixed it in Livingston [Recording Studios] with Jerry - but it was when he’d just remodeled Livingston and we booked the big room for eight days to do the tracks, and we moved in the smaller room to finish the mix. I’ve never mixed another record in that room. I’ve always insisted on the big room because I can’t stand that room.
Just the way things sound? Yeah, I just don’t hear it. I just don’t hear things right. I’ve done recording in there and overdubs, but I just will not mix in there. It makes me nuts. Then the group was making life a bit difficult because they wanted everything to be turned down, which is the opposite of the way most groups are. I was a bit annoyed when I heard the next record - Stipe’s voice is right up front. I think at the time I was uneasy about the record. They were uneasy about the record. I think we were all relieved the record did pretty well, but I think we all felt dissatisfied with the final result.
I really like that record. It stands out as a very different record for them. Now, it’s nice that people now come back to it and say, “Hey, I just realized that’s actually not so bad! It’s pretty good.”
It’s very different because they had the Mitch Easter/Don Dixon records before that.
drummers. Dave Mattacks was a great drummer. I worked with Steven Gadd. I worked with Earl Palmer. Come on, I worked with a lot of really, really good drummers - and Mike Kowalski is a terrific drummer. He was on a lot of the Nick Drake records. The truth is that Bill Berry and Jerry Augustyniak - they’re good drummers to be in those bands, but they ain’t world class drummers. That’s where if somebody wanted to call me on some of the things that I say about the philosophy of recording things live, there aren’t as many good musicians around these days. A lot of musicians making records are not that good at playing their instruments and in a way, if you say, the only way you should make this record is by playing and waiting for the best performance – you might never get the best performance because they’re just not really good enough to treat it, as you say, like a jazz record. Where is that moment going to happen? The moment needs help. They need the click track and they need something. With both records, I think, the farther along we went in finishing the record, overdubbing and mixing – both records – when you have a great track, you start adding things on - it just gets better. When you have a weak track, you add things on - it exposes the weakness. It doesn’t fix it. It makes it worse. If you add a harmony and you add another guitar, it kind of makes the flaws more obvious. It doesn’t cover them over. It’s very difficult to cover them over. I think I felt at the end of that experience working with those guys that maybe I wasn’t the right producer for them. I remember when I was working on the R.E.M. record there was another group working in the smaller room when we were working in the big room, and the two studios share a men’s room. So I would find myself standing at the urinal and there was a guy who was the producer or the bass player (I can’t remember) of the group in the other room, and we started having a nodding acquaintance. I remember saying, “How are you guys doing?” and he said, “Well, we got five tracks finished.” This was four days into the thing. He said, “Yesterday we did the bass drum and we are doing the bass line today.” I just would never have the patience to do a record like that. They were doing the A and B side to a single and they laid down the bass drum and…
A track at a time. Reckoning is one of the best examples of The next record the Maniacs did, Peter Asher obviously put a click on them. I mentioned that to Peter Buck. what they were doing. I can’t I saw him in Austin and talked about it and he said, imagine that being any better for “The thing with Scott Litt - we didn’t actually use a what they were at that time. Fables... click but we rehearsed with a click for days. We did it came out as kind of a darker, moodier with a click and then when we actually came to record in some respects. I think the second one is fantastic.
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record, he took the click off.” The other record that I did from that year which nobody really knows I did is Miss America by Mary Margaret O’Hara. What happened there is I tried to sign her to Hannibal and her manager said, “No. We want to be with a major label.” I got to know them and then she signed with Virgin. She actually said to Simon Draper, Virgin’s A&R director, “I’d like to use Joe Boyd as a producer,” and they said, “No. We have much more commercial ideas than that! We’re going to make you a star. We don’t want this Joe Boyd kind of record. You’re going to be produced by Andy Partridge (From XTC).” They come over and they check into Rockfield [Studios] in Wales and they start working with Andy Partridge. She brought over her Canadian band. It had Hugh Marsh on violin and Rusty [McCarthy] on guitar. These guys are really good musicians. They are Toronto players. The bass player and the drummer had been on the road for years with Chuck Mangione. They were jazz guys. They get to Rockfield and Andy Partridge says, “Okay, let’s put down a drum track. Let’s start it that way. Are you guys used to using headphones?” Treats them like they’re amateurs - A and B, he does it layer by layer and starts making this pop record and they freak out. Within a few days Mary Margaret had called up Virgin and says, “Either Andy leaves or we leave. We’re not making this record with Andy Partridge.”
I can’t imagine that. It was just a total culture clash – transatlantic in a way. The wildest way of recording has its origins in Britain. The British don’t play. They play at music and that’s one reason they make such good records. They’re very original. They’re very fresh. They don’t have that facility that the American musicians have where they can play any kind of style. There aren’t bars. It’s a whole different ethos. So, Andy and Virgin had in mind making an English pop record with Mary Margaret - and the musicians were like, “Fuck this, we want to play. We just want to plug in and play. We know these songs. Roll the tape.” Andy had never done a record like that. He couldn’t imagine doing a record like that. So I get a rather sheepish call from Virgin saying, “Oh Joe, how would you like to go down to Rockfield and produce Mary Margaret O’Hara?” I drove a hard bargain and got him to pay me a sizeable advance, and then I went down to Rockfield and I started working with them. It was very, very difficult because Mary, as you know...
I heard she’s a handful. She’s a handful. I love her! She’s a fantastic person really clever, really wonderful but, she’s very eccentric and she wouldn’t, couldn’t change her time – her Canadian time. She would stay up until six o’clock in the morning and then sleep until four o’clock in the afternoon. These guys were the kind of guys who liked to run at dawn – like two miles of road work before the sun gets too hot and come back and eat a big breakfast and be ready to go at ten-thirty or eleven so they were going nuts. I was going nuts. We couldn’t get Mary out of bed. Then we’d have these long sessions and they’d get sleepy at two o’clock in the morning and she’d just be waking up. But there was this fantastic moment I’ll never forget. One of the
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great songs on that record is “Bobby’s In Trouble” and there’s this weird, loping rhythm and even with them all playing together, it was difficult because she kept changing things. We finally did this take of “Bobby’s In Trouble” and I said, “That’s it. That’s nailed it. It’s fantastic.” It just had this great feel, and she was singing great and she said, “Yeah, guys that was really great, but I’d like to do it one more time.” Everyone looked at her like, “Mary, what are you talking about? It’s great!” She said, “Yeah, it is, but I heard something.” I said, “What?” She said, “Okay, now, just do exactly what you did on the last take, but” - and she pointed to the bass player - “you do exactly the same thing you did there, but do it one beat later.” Everyone went, “What?!” She said, “Trust me, it’s going to work.” They were all rolling their eyes going out there. I pushed the button and we started to take it and that’s the master take. It worked. She was right.
She heard it. She heard it. Then what happened was - that was in late November of ’84. Then Jefferson called and asked would I do an R.E.M. record – this was early January. What had happened with Mary Margaret was we finished all the tracks, and the idea was over the Christmas period she was going to be back in Toronto. Catherine (her sister, the comedienne) had a studio in her basement, so she was going to get someone in Toronto to make rough mixes and work out all the harmony parts, imagine other overdubs that she wanted, talk to musicians and then she’d be ready to go. I’d come in the middle of January and finish the record with her in Toronto. I finished that record and got back to London and did that 10,000 Maniacs record. Then I got a call from Jefferson saying, “Could you do an R.E.M. record?” I said, “Holy shit, I’d love to do an R.E.M. record.” But I can’t because they needed it right away. So I turned it down. I went to Toronto and I had this Chinese dinner with Mary Margaret and her manager. I’ll never forget it. We were sitting in this Chinese restaurant in Toronto and there’s a blizzard and the snow is piling up outside the window and Mary Margaret is explaining why she hadn’t done anything – why she had completely rethought the whole album and she thought that she wanted to record some new stuff. She hadn’t figured out any of the vocal stuff and she was re-thinking some of the things we had talked about. She wanted to take some things off that we had put on and I’m looking at the snow and I’m thinking, “Fuck. I’m never going to get out of here. I’m going to be snowed into this fucking city with this mad woman.” I’m haunted by this phone call that [I] had from Jefferson, so at some point toward the end of the evening I said, “Mary, I get the feeling you have a lot of strong views about how to do this record. It sounds to me as if you would kind of like to produce it yourself.” She said, “Joe that is so perceptive of you. That is so thoughtful. I love you. I think you’re wonderful. I’ve loved working with you, but I do really feel like I know what I want to do with this record.” I said, “Well, I’ll call Simon and see what he says” - knowing Simon would probably love to get rid of her. First I called Jefferson to say, “Do you guys still need a producer?”
He said, “Yeah, come on down to Athens.” I called Simon Draper and I said, “I think Mary wants to produce this record herself.” They agreed to give me a credit and pay me off or something.
How much of the original stuff was used? All of it – all those tracks I did in Wales -but it didn’t come out for five years. Five years! Michael Brook finished it off and he’s the one who got her to finish her vocals and mixed it and everything - but uncredited on the record, those are all my tracks.
That’s pretty strange. How did you end up moving into more of the world music stuff? Was part of that due to starting Hannibal? When I started Hannibal, my first signings were Richard and Linda Thompson, Joe King Carrasco, Geoff Muldaur - but I’d always (going back to when I was a kid), when I was twenty-something I would get stoned and listen to Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares. I loved little bits of African music. I knew about the Ali Brothers – that was another great thing to get stoned and listen to. I loved Edith Piaf. I loved all kinds of shit. In the seventies I got totally into Carlos Gardel and the tango. I was gobbling up stuff. When I was running Hannibal, my brother (who was a lawyer) took a year off from being a lawyer and worked with me. The idea was if it worked out, he would run the New York office and I would run the London office. I’m in the office every day scrambling trying to make enough records to fill the orders for [Richard and Linda Thompson’s] Shoot Out the Lights because they were selling like crazy. We didn’t have enough credit because distributors don’t pay you for 90 to 120 days. The pressing plants need paper in 60 days. So I was getting put on hold by pressing plants, scrambling around checking over duplicate parts from England and driving them to pressing plants in upstate New York, hoping that we get enough to fill the order for Pickwick on the West Coast, because Richard was out there this week on tour and I’m going nuts. In the middle of all this my brother says, “Listen, I’ve got an idea. Let’s do a series of vocal harmony records, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo or The Ali Brothers. You could say that in that idea that he presented to me were the ideas that would dominate world music five years later. And my response was, “Listen, I love that shit. It’s fantastic. I’d love to sit at home and listen to that stuff, but I’m trying to run a record company and that is such an uncommercial idea!” Of course, he turned out to be totally right and I missed the boat. I loved that stuff - I just didn’t believe there was a market for it. In a way that was [what] the whole “world” term was about, was trying to find a place to put them in the record store. Because in 1983 the record store had a section called “International Folk”, or something called “Foreign”, or something called “Ethnic”, or “Imports” or whatever. I think the trigger for me was in 1985. I went to the Fairport Convention annual summer festival where they play and invite people, and they had this weird group on called Mosaic. It was made up of a couple of Irish musicians and a Dutch guy and this Hungarian singer. It was
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boring kind of pan-Euro folk noodling. I went off to get a beer. As I was walking away from the stage I heard the singer come on and it was an Hungarian singer singing a Bulgarian song using open throat technique – just this incredible piercing noise – just her on stage singing a capella. “Whoa! What’s that?” Afterwards I went backstage and I met her. I said, “Wow that Bulgarian song you did was fantastic!” She said, “Oh you like Bulgarian music?” She said, “Come to Hungary next summer because a bunch of my friends and I are all going down to this huge festival in the mountains. It’s a festival which has this huge assemblage of traditional musicians from all over the country.” I said, “I’ll be there.” I actually tried to set up doing a documentary about it. I pitched it to BBC and Channel Four and I got this woman who spoke Russian to come and translate for me - just before I’m leaving, 4AD puts out Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares and John Peel starts playing the shit out of it and it goes onto the charts. I’m feeling really stupid because if I had listened to my brother... The Hungarian singer who invited me to go to Bulgaria was Marta Sebestyen, who is a wonderful singer when she sings in Hungarian. I went to Budapest and I ended up licensing music. I went to Bulgaria and met all these people there. I went back in the winter and made records and put them out and I found Ivo Papasov & His Bulgarian Wedding Band and started this whole adventure. One thing led to another and I was part of the committee that invented the term “World Music”.
I was surprised by that, but it makes sense. You have to have somewhere to put the record. Going somewhere like Bulgaria to make a record, what are the challenges? Is it the language barrier? You’ve got to educate yourself about the music. Yeah, but it was wonderful. It was a bit of a challenge, but it was great fun. I met wonderful people. A lot of what I did in world music would not have been possible if I did not speak French. I learned French a long time ago when I was a teenager in school. I’ve gotten to be pretty fluent in it now, but twenty years ago I was just okay. In Bulgaria, the woman who was the producer of folk music for the state radio - she didn’t speak any English, but she spoke French. My engineers spoke French much more than English. Then when I started working with West Africans, Toumani Diabaté and all that, we always communicated in French. I’m not sure I could have done the Songhai records [without it]. French was a door into Spanish. I learned a lot of Spanish so I could make a lot of stuff like that. That was pretty key. The radio studios in Bulgaria were great. It was all Telefunken and old stuff.
All the good old stuff. The sad thing is, you meet this time and time again – I remember the next time I came back to Bulgaria, I made some comment like, “Let’s put this through the EMT plate” and they said, “Oh, we got rid of that.” I said, “You got rid of it? Why?” “Oh, there was some American who came through here and he had one of the Lexicons (not even that, something worse), and
he said he’d give us a good deal on that and he’d even Doing “Arnold Layne” - that song was take the EMT off our hands”. Oh God, I bet that’s part of their set, but was it a longer, sitting now in Ocean Way [Studios] in L.A. I saw that jamming thing? all the time - the plundering of studios and Yeah, they would play it and do a jam on it. “improving” them. So you just had to say, “Let’s rein it in
Without having a real good a little bit and change the lyrics grounding, people usually think on the B side”? modern is good when it comes to Yeah. recording technology, and yet Another record that is really things many things haven’t really fascinating is Shoot Out the Lights. improved in fifty years. It’s a really emotional, heavy record, Quite the contrary. In Cuba, Alfredo Rodriguez and his but Richard Thompson has gone on Korean investors built the big fancy studio in Cuba record saying it’s not about their and nobody in Cuba wants to use the great EGREM situation. Studios where the Buena Vista Social Club and I think it was subconscious. A lot of things that are true ¡Cubanismo! were done. “Why would you want to go you don’t know are true. I believe Richard that he did in there? It’s so difficult.” You go in these modern not set out to write songs about breaking up with his studios and it sounds like shit. wife, but I think that there were certainly tensions in They’re different. Progress isn’t always the marriage. The marriage was definitely difficult in progress. I first learned your name the period he was writing the songs and whether they through Pink Floyd as a teenager, and were subconscious wish-fulfillment or projection of the story is often told that you were something….
hoping that you could have produced Were the sessions reflective of anything their first record. If that had like that? happened, if EMI had let it happen – No. This is a story that was told before; maybe more in even Geoff Emerick had a hard time England than here. It was a very curious circumstance coming back and engineering The because I set up Hannibal - Island agreed to back me Beatles – if that had happened and you initially and that didn’t last very long – and I went to ended up producing the first Pink Richard and his manager Jo Lustig because I knew he Floyd record, what would you have had been dropped. Somebody at Chrysalis had told done differently? me, “We’re not going to renew their contract.” I think Piper at the Gates of Dawn is a pretty good record. It’s not like you could say, “Oh well, Norman Smith messed up”, because they made a good record. I think “Bike” is a fantastic track. I guess my fantasy is not so much about sounding different, but about hanging on to Syd. I got along pretty well with Syd and since then I’ve had people tell me that he never felt comfortable with Smith and the whole thing got kind of out of hand for him. Listen, I don’t think I would have had a magic wand that would have prevented him from taking acid every day for seven days, but that’s the part – it’s not so much listening to the record and thinking, “Oh I could have made a better record than this or I could have made a better sound than this” - although I think that there is something about “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”, which were both done at Sound Techniques with John [Wood], and I think it punches more.
John’s recordings had a very exciting sound to them. The room was fantastic, and he knew the room.
With Pink Floyd there seemed to be a dichotomy between their recorded self and their live self, especially in those days. Have you ever heard the soundtrack to Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London?
Yeah, “Nick’s Boogie”? Yeah and “Interstellar Overdrive” – that’s what they sounded like. I did those two records. That is what they sounded like with Syd.
making a record, but had no deal. They got the money and the production deal with United Artists, but they want to sign the artists through them. Then somebody told me that Rafferty and Murphey had this plan to set up a management company. Even though Lustig was the one who brought Richard to them, Lustig was a very abrasive guy. A lot of people didn’t like him. He was insisting on having an override royalty that would go straight to him for executive producer credit or something like that. They were resisting this and holding off signing the contract. Meanwhile they’re spending United Artists’ money making the record. Then they get to the end and they need Richard to do a few more guitar solos and Richard has decided he doesn’t like the record. Richard says, “I’m not going to finish the record. I’m not going to sign the contract and I’m not going to finish the record.” It all suddenly explodes and everything is in meltdown and it’s a complete disaster. So I go to Richard and I say, “Listen,” he’d used Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks and Simon Nichol working with Rafferty, so they knew all the songs. I said, “You guys are totally rehearsed and ready to go. Let’s go into the studio and do it in three days for Hannibal.” He said, “Great idea. I’d love this. I can’t wait to get out of this. It’s been kind of a nightmare.” I said, “One condition - the money that we save by doing it so quickly, I’m going to put into tour support. You’ve got to do an American tour.” I talked to Joe Lustig. He said, “What’s this about an American tour? I don’t want Richard to go to America until he plays Carnegie Hall.” I said, “Joe you’re full of shit. This is what Richard needs to do. This will transform his career. He needs to get out. America doesn’t know Richard Thompson. They don’t know who the fuck he is. They’ve never heard him play. They don’t know what a genius he is. He’s got to get out there and play The Bottom Line, Great American Music Hall and all those places. Forget Carnegie Hall. That will come later. Let him play these places and that’s the deal. If you don’t agree, fuck it. I’m not going to do it because I don’t want to make this record and see it languish without an American audience.” I called Richard and I told him what I said and he said, “Well, I want to tour in America so I’ll tell Joe we have a deal.” That’s what happened. We went into the studio, bang! We did it in three days - fantastic, great tracks but, then the budget got a little ballooned because Linda was very pregnant and she was having trouble breathing. So everything was done except her vocals. She and I would go into the studio night after night for five nights and do her vocals line by line.
Sunnyvista didn’t sell. I said, “I’m making this label. It’s called Hannibal. Come on - let’s make a great record together.” Jo Lustig said, “No way. We’re going to sign with United Artists.” I said, “Really? How’s that going to happen?” He said, “We’re doing a deal with Gerry Rafferty and Hugh Murphey” who were hot because of “Baker Street”. Hugh Murphey was a big folk fan. He had done a lot of folk records for Decca over the years and Rafferty knew Richard. I went to Richard and said, “Richard, have you ever worked with Gerry Rafferty, the way that those guys work? Because they make pop records. They really make slick sounding records – very tight, all overdubbing and control and focus.” He said, “Well, I like Gerry. He’s a good guy and I think it’ll be interesting. We need to do something different. I think it’ll work.” I said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” They started working on the record. I’m getting occasionally, either through Richard or Linda, reports that it’s not going that great, but they’re finishing it. I hear that they finished recording, but they aren’t mixing it yet and they have a few overdubs left to do. Richard has a few She’d just be winded, more or less. guitar solos to do. Then, the next thing I know, Yes. That’s the story of that record. someone tells me to call Richard. I call Richard and One thing you bring up that’s really important with a lot of this is you Richard said – he never would have admitted he was created a management company wrong – he said, “Well, Joe, it didn’t quite work out early on. You said, “If I’m going to get the way I hoped and I’m not that happy.” The more I involved with this record, I want to got into it, I discovered this incredible thing. I’m not make sure this band on this record sure whether this is the true reason, but I remember does well.” That’s a lot of foresight becoming convinced that I had discovered what was and that’s also stepping outside the actually going on. The first thing I found out was that realm of just being a producer. the contract had never been signed. They were
38/Tape Op#60/Mr. Boyd/(Continued on page 40)
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When I set out, all I wanted was to be a producer. To me, management was a pain in the ass. I didn’t want any part of it, but I realized very early on with The Incredible String Band – they set the tone in a way because they were folkies. They played Scottish folk clubs. I took one look at them and I said, “This is not your audience. You need to play for freaks. You need to play for the people who listen to Pink Floyd. You need to play for people who listen to The Grateful Dead. I don’t want you going to folk clubs.” It’s just something that happens with almost everything I ever do in the studio. It’s not a category. It is slightly to one side or the other of the category. You can’t just put it on the rock band conveyor belt and expect it to work.
I went looking for records of yours. I went to the folk section and there’s the first Fairport Convention record. I said, “Do you have any Incredible String Band?” and they said, “Incredible String Band is in psychedelic.” Exactly! I think it’s true of almost everything I’ve ever been involved in – not so much as a producer because sometimes I do things for hire like R.E.M., who had a career - but where I would take initiative and start something up. The only way it was ever going to work was for me to get involved. Back in the ’60s I managed people and I was determined not to get into that in the ’70s because I thought I was going to be a film producer – even when I was passionate about something like the McGarrigle sisters. I watched that first record (which I think is one of the best things I was ever involved in) die because the cover was crap, because Warner Brothers had it on the schedule. Kate got pregnant and cancelled the tour - and thank God she got pregnant because she had Martha [Wainwright, sister of Rufus Wainwright]. But they should have held the record. All kinds of things lead me to say, “I’m going to have to have my own label.” Even as a label head, a lot of the things I would do dealing with music artists would technically be more management. I would set up the tours and a lot of that worked pretty well. When Ryko bought the company they said they couldn’t do that. We don’t want our people spending time setting up tours. Sometimes we did it anyway without them knowing. That was the only way to make it work. Everything I’ve ever done has been something that you’ve had to figure out - not just how to record it, but how to get it across to people in a way that isn’t the customary way to go about it. It wasn’t something that I had a vision would be a great idea. It was more of a defensive response to “What the hell am I going to do with this record unless I get it to the right audience and get this group out to the right audience?”
What do you find yourself doing now… besides writing a book? Well, I finally got a performer who does absolutely everything I tell him to.
You? Yeah. It’s fun. I’m here to middle of April doing lots more stuff and then I’m going back to London to sit down and write the world music book. r www.joeboyd.co.uk
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Bob Power Vibe is Everything
by Allen Farmelo photo by Ronald Porty 42/Tape Op#60/Mr. Power
Bob Power is one of those names you might know not from reading liner notes, but instead from listening to vocal ad-libs on records he’s produced or engineered. In the mid-eighties, Power found himself engineering at Calliope Studios in NYC, home to many groups that were part of what he calls the second wave of hip-hop. Bands like Stetsasonic, The Jungle Brothers, Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul went to Power to track and mix records loaded with samples, heavy bass tones and enormous 808 kick drums. By the nineties, he was producing records with D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Me’shell Ndegecello and others at the center of modern soul music. The new millennium has seen him mixing or producing with The Roots, India.Arie, Ozomatli, and more recently the Seattle-based rock band Maktub and singer-songwriter Andrea Wittgens. His is a career that has required an openness to innovative recording strategies, new technology and most importantly, groundbreaking music. As preparation for this career, Power cites his experiences as a guitar player on the midwestern soul circuit as much as his two university degrees in music. Today, Power is a self-proclaimed “gear junkie” who remains as open to new recording strategies and technologies as ever. Every time we talk, he mentions a new piece of gear that he’s excited about trying, or a new technique he’s discovered. However, one soon gets the sense that a spiritual compass guides his work as much as anything else, and that vibe truly is everything when it comes to making records with him. We hung out in his Manhattan studio and talked about everything from karma to kilohertz. circuit. Other than the fact that hip-hop was a What changed production-wise between massive paradigm shift, or reflected a paradigm shift the first and second wave of hip-hop? in the art forms of the black community, it was all The really big difference between the first and second the same thing to me. Unfortunately to this day wave of hip-hop, for me, is the use of samples. One engineering is kind of a white male boys club - and of the reasons A Tribe Called Quest was so amazing is was very much so back then. For a lot of those guys, that it was the first time samples were used in a really kids would come in dressed in what the engineers elaborate musical construction - particularly the thought were funny clothes, smoking weed, sluggin’ second album, Low End Theory. That was [Q-]Tip and 40s. I mean, you have to understand that a kid Ali [Shaheed Muhammad]’s real genius. It’s an comes from a certain environment, a tough interesting point because the constructions, if you environment, and walks into a nice recording studio listen to Low End Theory musically, are very complex. where everybody pads around in expensive shoes. If you had good session players sit down and play You’ve got to realize where people come from and that, it wouldn’t sound the same because part of the sort of give them a little room to reflect that without cool thing about samples in hip-hop is that they saying, “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” weren’t meant to go together. As a guitar player, I People would walk in with turntables and the would play on a new track without monitoring the old engineer would say, “Well, what do you want to do?” one, and it didn’t sound right. I soon realized, “Oh The artist would say, “We are going to put the track right, I’ve got to play to the old track to get it to down this way.” The engineer would say, “Don’t you sound right.” Another thing about sampling is that a want to lock to time code?” “Time code? What do you hook can be a sound, and that’s really cool. So, I mean, man?” I think in a weird way there was think the palette has gotten so much larger and more perhaps an undertone of unconscious racism there on varied on every level. Stetsasonic were right on the the part of a lot of engineers. When people walk in end of the first wave, and Daddy-O and Prince Paul the door, you have to say, “Hey what are you doing were visionaries, though they kind of got lost in the and what do you need?” I find that if you focus and shuffle at that point. Their second record [In Full work at getting your humanist values in the right Gear] was a brilliant sample-based record. place, everything else will fall into place. Do you see any technology since sampling that has affected the sound You use loops in a lot of your stuff. Sometimes they can be heard, but of music as much? not always. I consider sampling as part of MIDI, and that to me was
I don’t think it is something that people set out to do, but an interesting byproduct of loop-based stuff is it’s all in the rub of different people’s time feels working at the same time. I’ve been playing funk music since the late sixties, and in the mid- to late eighties when MIDI and quantizing were in, things got tight, but not that funky. Then I started listening back to my favorite records - Curtis Mayfield is a perfect example - the shit is all over the place! Bongo Eddie plays percussion on a lot of Curtis Mayfield’s stuff, and I have a joke with a lot of my musician friends that it sounds like he is playing in the next room. Then I realized that the funk is really in the rub, and if you listen to hip-hop stuff, that’s when it’s cool. If you take a loop that is against something else and you recycle or beat slice it and make it perfectly in time, it totally loses the flavor.
In the past there have been two humans, or the accident of two loops. Do you think we can now program these vibes in there? That’s a good question. I only use stuff like beat slicing when I really have to. Usually the only things that really line up pretty well are kicks and snares. That can be kind of dodgy, still. Occasionally there is one hit in the midst of a four bar loop that’s off, and I’ll do some time stretching in front of it or actually cut and paste that snare, but for the most part I love the rub. That’s what makes it really interesting. Again, how much is too much is up to one’s judgment. Perfect records are boring. Knowing how to keep the good mistakes is the fine line of production that we are always walking no matter how many records we do.
This gets tied into vibe. What are some of the things that you actually do as a producer to help create and maintain the vibe? I am a slave to the song. When artists ask, “What’s your approach?” I say, “My approach is always whatever the song wants to be.” So, it really depends on the song as to what elements you think would be most effective at pulling forth the vibe of that particular song. If a song does not start taking on a life of its own at a certain point, and doesn’t start telling you what to do as opposed to you telling it what to do it’s not happening. It’s a weird thing to say, but everybody who makes records knows what I am talking about. If the song comes out exactly the way you had it in your head it’s going to be boring. There is that wonderful, wonderful point where the song takes on a life of its own and it’s great.
really part of the same revolution. Between the late I often have a bunch of little things happening, and if you listen sometimes you hear them and say, “Oh seventies and mid-eighties, it was a really big cool, there is a loop happening there.” Much of the change. I was actually scoring for TV at the time, and time, even on rock records, there is a lot of stuff in I was working for a more traditional, old-school there that you don’t hear that is really more of a feel musician who would write charts. With MIDI a lot of thing. One of my theories about record making in guys from that school fell by the wayside. A lot of general is that if the track is rhythmically buoyant, or engineers said, “That’s not music,” because the shit So what kind of things can you do to get sort of interesting enough, then you don’t have to sell may have sounded super primitive around that time to that point? the song so hard. One of the problems with badly - especially to those guys who were used to sitting No matter what happened at home when you left that produced music and demos that come in is the time behind the console for years. The same arranger morning, no matter how bad the subway was, no matter is not compelling. Even if it is somebody playing an would set down the charts and count it off. The how pissed you are with the record company, you put acoustic guitar and singing, it’s got to have this thing engineers would put up the same mics in the same the headphones on and you are on mic, as a singer for to it. You are immediately drawn into it, and you can way. I’m not saying it was lazy, but it was sort of example, and you must get into that world in the music really listen to what is going on. complacent. When MIDI came out a lot of these guys and not worry that the lights are too bright and stuff said, “This isn’t music!” and they have been selling With loops and sample-based hiplike that. I do everything I can to make the person as hop, where you are using loops insurance for the last thirty years. The same thing comfortable as they can be. Interestingly, there’s a way against each other, are you trying happened when hip-hop first came into New York to read a chart and do that at the same time. Another to find the buoyancy in the City studios. I had played, oddly, in black bands in thing on the engineering tip which I think is really key interaction of those elements? high school and as an undergrad on the soul band Mr. Power (continued on page 44)/Tape Op#60/43
- and this is something that a lot of assistants don’t understand - is that when someone comes in to work, especially an MC or singer, they should be able to walk up to the microphone, make a couple of noises and you should press record. Go! There is no reason not to have a mic and signal processing chain all up and working. Not letting the technology get in the way is a giant thing. The whole point is to make the tweaking process as transparent as possible when you are trying to be creative. One of the things I try to do when I write or produce is to make a concerted effort not to “fix the hihat”, meaning don’t get hung up on the small details. For better or worse I am a very detail-oriented practitioner. But you have to know when to put your blinders on and when to concentrate on the things that are most important to whatever stage of the process you are working in. That’s where a lot of not-soexperienced engineers fall down, because they are like, “Oh wait, I gotta move this...” It’s important to not give up - you always have to got to be trying to make it a little bit better, while at the same time, you also have to know that there are certain stages of the process where you have to get going quickly and then shut the fuck up.
Is he working on the drums strictly, or is he also mic’ing it up? No, he’s just working on the drums. Occasionally he’ll have other stuff to say, which is actually really handy. There is another guy, Gregg Keplinger - a sort of legendary guy that I worked with in Seattle a couple of years ago - who was really amazing and apparently did a lot of the big Seattle records. I did a rock band called Maktub out there a couple of years ago - great band with a really great drummer. Greg was the kind of guy where you would be in the control room and he’d hit something and you’d say, “The snare sounds a little baskety, it’s a little hollow and big, but definitely hollow.” He’d say, “Oh, okay” and he would go “urt” and turn one thing a tiny bit and all of a sudden it was right there. Whereas guys who are not necessarily masters, they’ll be “urt… urt… urt… Let me get some tape.”
And it changes too much. And it takes forever. A master usually looks at it and says, “That will do it.”
It seems we are in an era where more people are off consoles and are mixing and matching mic pres, EQs So a tech day could be really be and compressors. construed as getting the vibe for the I think we are in a golden age of professional audio right next recording project. now. A second golden age, because people are making With rhythm tracks - if I have money, time and we are going to do a couple of days of rhythm tracks - the first day is just a setup day. That is great because you don’t have the guitar player sitting around for three hours while you doing the drums and then have to go in and be inspired. Sometimes I’ll say, “If you go out for dinner and want to come back around nine and see what’s going on, if you guys feel like playing, we will probably be good by then.” The players will love you more for it because it means that you are taking care with how they come off on the record. I’ve never found anybody who wasn’t happy that I was taking a lot of time to make them sound as good as possible. Again, if you approach that from a humanist level, all the other things fall into place.
But they know that is just a day to get sounds, so the pressure is off a little bit. Right. Now if I have session people coming in, I don’t have that luxury. You really have to go for it and get it quickly. There is a way, with an assistant, to actually have most of the drum kit going before the guy starts playing. When the drummer comes in and sits down, obviously your levels are going to change, the placements are going to change a little, but you should pretty much know what mics you are going to use and they should be set, there should be signal flowing, and you should know if there is any part of the kit that is going to be a technical problem. I use drum techs - and again, that is another expense that most people don’t usually have the luxury for - but I’ve learned a lot from them. There is a guy called Mike Burns whom I have known since he was 18 years old – he’s in his thirties now – and he works with [Steve] Gadd and Paul Simon… he’s been with everybody. Every time I’ve had him set up the kit it sounds great real fast. Period.
becoming a better in-the-box mixer about two years ago. I am fascinated by the fact that every time I do what is fundamentally an in-the-box mix, I’m still learning something new. Funny too, it wasn’t really a survival thing. I feel that if you make fundamental changes to what you love based on making money, it fucks everything up. You have to really have a passion for the thing and then everything else falls into place. I took the challenge of being a better in-the-box mixer much like I looked at MIDI and said, “Wow, all the guys who said this isn’t music, look what they missed!” So, I do about half of my work at my place now. My room happens to be terrifically accurate the way I have it set up. I cheat a little, since I have a really high-end, twomix bus that I go out through – a lot of Pendulum stuff, API, GML, Tube-Tech - really nice stuff. I can really mix and match on the two-bus the way I want to. That said, we’re at the point now that when I port those mixes completely in the box, it compares quite well. With digital EQ, I find because of the lessened phase shift issues, you’ve got to throw the faders around a lot more than you do with analog EQ. I work on something in the box, and I find that I’m often +8 or -10 on things, where if I did that with an analog EQ it would totally suck the life out if it. I also find that digital seems much less forgiving in terms of the timbral anomalies between the different ranges of someone’s voice and their proximity to the microphone. We know about slew rates and tape compression, so that’s an obvious reason why analog would smooth it out a little bit. But for some it’s an intangible. I find myself doing a lot more automated EQ on mixes than I ever would have thought I would have done, and I think, “Wow, what did you do in the old days?” It just didn’t seem to sound that weird at different places. On the other side of the coin, there were records in the analog era where I did automate like that. For example, I mixed a Chaka Khan album - it was just so incredibly thrilling to throw up the fader and hear that. There is almost no singer with a greater dynamic range or pitch range in the business. But it kind of worked against us for a minute, because when she sang low and breathy she would really come in on the mic. When she sings really high and screams – it’s almost like a muted trumpet, it’s got that edge at 4 kHz that sounds like paper ripping – she would pull back. So, the proximity effect on low end was exactly the opposite of what you need to happen. It was fascinating. So, we actually had her coming back on five or six different faders with totally different signal chains, and we automated that. That’s a luxury. But my thing is I don’t care how you get there. It’s the old Duke Ellington thing: “If it sounds good, it is good.” There are certain practices that we should follow because we know that most of the time it will make a positive difference. But for the most part, if it sounds good, it’s great.
emulations of the old stuff that actually works better. Anybody who has ever owned Neves knows what I’m talking about – it’s usually switches and caps. One of the reasons I like modern microphones that are built on older principles is that they sound the same every day. I like to be able to mix and match my signal chain from the microphone all the way up to what the media is, something that is optimized for what I am recording. On a very large level, if I can afford it and I’m doing a rock band, we cut the rhythm tracks to analog tape, then the poor assistant spends a day transferring, and we finish the record in the box. I think that’s something that all the geeks who are going to be reading this magazine, including myself, will hear. That and the giant differences of mic pres. I am often asked, “I’m setting up a studio for myself, what should I do?” Get a really great mic pre. It makes more of a difference than the microphone itself. I’ve done things with a good pre and a [SM]57 that just sound fabulous. In the modern context it’s a little dark, but you can always deal with that - you can always open it up. I’ve been a Neve guy for years. I have twenty-four channels of Neve in racks of eight. I mean it’s nuts, but over the years I just collected it to that point. And when I go to a room that might not have that stuff, I bring the stuff with me. Also, I have been totally loving APIs lately. I have a couple that are racked up, and I love to be able to track with APIs. There is just something about the speed and the punch, and it’s not flavorless by any means. I love to mix and match gear when I am Are you summing in the box? recording - it’s actually really important. On the mix I am summing in my [Yamaha] 02R96. At this point it is more like a giant mouse than anything else. As time end, however, any pro mixer who tells you that they are goes on I use less and less from the 02R96 for several not drifting more and more towards plug-ins and less reasons. Number one, recall is easier if everything is and less toward analog inserts is lying. Even the analog at unity and I just have to recall my outboard stuff. stalwarts are understanding that, for the ease of recall Number two, what I do now when I mix on an SSL is and changes, man it’s great! I picked up the mantle of
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spend a half a day to a day here on each song, getting That’s the wonderful, incredibly complex matrix of being it to sound as good as I can without any outboard, sonic practitioners of music, because music is then we take it up to the big room, split it out onto constantly changing people’s decisions about what the faders, and four hours later it is phenomenal. instruments to use with what tonal coloration, what Compared to where we came from with Pro Tools and kind of part it is going to play - and it really boils down digital audio, I think Digi has been doing a to what’s best for the song. As a producer you always tremendous job both operationally and sonically - HD have to say, “What does the song want to do, what is sounds quite good. There are still issues. I have more going to represent this song sung by this artist as best of an issue with getting the spatial things happening we can?” So, if you have one part of a record that’s when mixing in the box than anything else recorded on an answering machine and another part of particularly front-to-rear combined with side-to-side. a record that’s the London Symphony Orchestra, fine. If You can have stuff going out, kind of forty-five the songs want that thing, then it’s your responsibility degrees left or right, and then you can have stuff to pull that together. What’s on tape (and I use that that’s panned really hard at ninety degrees, but I have term all the time even though it’s “what’s on DAW”) has trouble getting things in between those spaces. such a giant bearing on how a mix will sound. Most Spatially, mixing in the box is challenging and I think people sort of have a way they approach things that everybody will say the same thing. That said, I love will tilt it one direction or the other. There are certain the challenge. It’s not like every time I went up to a producers with whom I always feel like it’s a good J or K room that it was perfect or imperfect, but the marriage when I mix. Jay Dee, the hip-hop producer challenges are very, very different. I do love being who passed away recently, is a perfect example. He was able to get a mix pretty far here and then take it up really good at distributing his low end, his kick and his to an SSL room and finish it off. That’s great because bass. People don’t pay enough attention to tuning by the time you get to the big room, you’re not gating drum samples, much less drums, but his kick and his the kick drum at $2,000 a day. Psychologically it’s a bass were always well delineated and he had a real big deal as well. innate sense for where to place things in the sonic spectrum. Not so much with EQ, but just with the Do you stem out the individual tracks fundamental timbre, the instrument and the range it and sum with the SSL? was playing in. It’s an old adage amongst engineers: “A Yeah, I’ve started working at unity where I leave the great mix is a great arrangement.” I think that faders flat and split out into stereo pairs, and I have a everybody who mixes will say exactly the same thing. way of organizing my stuff so that when I take it up to an analog desk and put the faders flat, it’s exactly the You’ve been mastering your own same. It’s really, really great. At first, I started using work more and more, and now for faders on my desk and some EQ from the 02R96, but I others. Why? realized that unless I really had to, it was less flexible. I’m going to take a lot of heat for saying this, but frankly I’m tired of going back five times, which is mostly a Are you doing much analog processing factor of the loudness wars. I have all this great gear, during your preparation before and I know what I want it to sound like, so I just going to the big room, before hitting finally said to myself that I should go ahead and start an SSL? Will you go out to one of your mastering my own stuff. From that, I’ve started to EQs or compressors and come back in? master for select outside clients. Well, yeah. If I have program EQ on stuff, I replicate it up there and use that as a point of departure. You’ve said you work hard to get things
So you use the same analog pieces there, rather than print it?
loud, but not squished. What do you do to achieve that?
Right, and some of my stuff travels with me. I try to keep That’s sort of my quest - lots of creative limiting and my recall written simply in the track’s comments box. compression. But when I say “creative”, I mean you But every studio has a GML EQ and Tube-Techs. The really have to work. That’s my feeling about it. I don’t API and Pendulum compressors I either bring or I can think there’s one method. It’s like anything: you try this, rent. It’s funny, I am just thinking about all the pieces you try that. You see what works best. So it’s just sort of of gear I am mentioning, and I hope this comes looking for the right piece for that particular song. There across: everybody is going to have a different thing to are negative artifacts of limiting that you just try to say about a different piece of gear. Some people are minimize - distortion, particularity on the release. Also, going to say, “I can’t believe that he likes the API if you limit badly it will take away all the pop, because 2500 Bus Compressor. Man, the SSL kicks the shit out you are taking the attack transients out. It’s funny of it!” It just really depends on who you are, how you because I am hedging a lot about it, because there are do things and how things are working that day. Music all sorts of different things that I do. In fact, some of is a moving target sonically. It’s never the same twice! what I do crunches the front end of the A to D, but if I That’s one of the things that I love about it. can hear it in a crunchy way, then it’s not cool. There are also things you can do in your compiler - you can limit How much of that tallness in your again in whatever you use for your CD compiling. I find sound is you, and how much of that is that hitting it hard on the way into the A-to-Ds sounds the history of your mixing and different than tuning it up in the compiler. It’s a different producing, whom you have worked thing. The latter is somewhat less objectionable to a with and the kind of sounds you have point and then it goes, “Ccaakkk.” been recording?
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So when you say you do it to a particular song, are there certain songs where you use one signal chain and others where you would use a totally different signal chain on the same record? Or are you using the same chain for the same color? One of the big, big things about mastering is pulling the record together as a whole. It’s a giant thing now. The line is a very interesting one, because you don’t want everything sounding the same, but you don’t want it sounding too different. It seems that if I think I want to use all the same things it doesn’t sound right. It just never works out that way.
Are you ever fighting yourself between your two-bus stem processing from mixing and when you go back and are mastering the whole track? Do you use the same chains? It’s a different chain, and no, I’ve been very lucky with that. I know you are not supposed to master your own stuff for a bunch of reasons. But I have to say that the stuff of my own that I have mixed and mastered sounds better than anything else I’ve done. I am not saying I am a great mastering engineer, nor am I saying these other people are not – quite the contrary - we all know and appreciate many incredible mastering engineers. But, it just worked.
What do you see as the difference between two-bus processing on a mix and mastering? Modern records, for the most part, are so aggressive EQwise, and to a certain degree compression-wise, that I wouldn’t want to commit to that much at one stage of the process. I generally don’t limit a mix when I am printing it. I will compress it, but in a way that it makes the music sound better - the same thing with EQs, and a part of it is twice sounds a lot better than once, just because of the way EQ curves work. Interestingly, you can do some two-bus processing on mixes that actually sounds really good, and you go, “Gee, it makes it sound great.” Then you master it, whether it’s you or somebody else, and then you listen to the unmastered mixes and they sound like there’s Kleenex over your head. I think everybody goes through this, which is an interesting sort of psycho-sonic thing. There are certain tools - for example multiband compressors where you can solo the different bands. But if you’re not careful, you can lose your reference point. If you solo a high frequency band, say from 6 kHz on up, or mute the other bands and that’s all you listen to for a second, just to kind of find something in there, when you open up the track again, everything sounds horribly dull. So you gotta watch doing things like that. On the other hand, I like the fact that you can solo the different bands and say, “Okay, this is where I need to be working.” I find that I need to take ear breaks every once and a while, just for two minutes and then come back and pick up again. So, it’s a matter of degree. I try not to do anything too radical on the two-bus, either during mixing or mastering. Mastering is usually fine-tuning a second time.
I have heard you mention before that you also de-ess more than once at different points in the signal chain.
to redo it and change something a little. If it’s not really off the wall or really damaging to the record, I’m like, “Yeah that’s not going to take much, if that’s important to you.” But if they say something that is really damaging to the record I will tell them that, and tell them that they probably need to find somebody else to do it. There have been some times where I really think that people have used stuff that I took to a certain point and worked from that point on, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not important.
Or twice at different frequencies. Although, I am definitely from the school that says when you start putting two or three things on something, you had better think about your approach. Because in way, the purist in me says, “Bob, start again. You shouldn’t need all these things.” I’m also of the mind now to be really objective. Does it sound better? If it sounds better man, you know, I just go with Tell me a little bit about teaching at NYU. whatever I had to slap on it. But often I find I need It’s in its fourth year. I am teaching a class in advanced production at the Clive Davis Department of Recorded to de-ess at 2 kHz and then again at 8 kHz, ‘cause Music, Tisch School of the Arts, at NYU. I am they are very different areas. assuming the Clive endowment program gave it its Are you using software de-essers? mandate, but it seems a bit separate, which is very Yeah, I like the Waves DeEsser, not the Renaissance, but good. I know a bunch of people who are very the regular one. Also, you can use de-essers as tonal successful practitioners now who have come out of shaping tools if you have enough range. The Waves the Music Tech Program. The Department of Recorded one only goes down to 2 kHz. I find if there’s a lot of Music is not part of the Music Department either, things that are kind of spiky and snarfy in the upper which tends to be a little more classically oriented. I mid range, if I set it all the way down to 2 kHz and if was pleased to find that it’s a very, very well the vocal is all nose and real pointed, it can do a lot developed four-year curriculum that includes a couple for smoothing it out. Another thing about de-essing of semesters of legal issues for the record business, which is interesting, and this comes from the analog couple of semesters of music history and the history days, is that it can help acoustic guitars. If you have of recorded music. There’s some people there, reggae an acoustic guitar that is real spiky and stringy in and hip-hop historians, who are absolutely amazing. certain areas, a de-esser can really help tuck those The engineering end of it is very strong. I have mostly places in. You have to be careful because you can juniors and seniors, and Jim Anderson chairs the really dull it out too. department, who has probably recorded more good Do you have any techniques, tricks, things jazz and classical records than anybody. Jim is really that you do, that you really don’t want a master and so is Nick Sansano, who runs the other people to know about? production end of it. Jason King is the Artistic No! That’s a quick answer. There are some guys that Director. There are a bunch of people who have been cover up their mix shit, and it’s the silliest thing. in the record business for a long time, including There was a thread on Gearslutz where people were attorney Lauren Davis. It doesn’t mean that you are talking about who owns the materials for the record going to come out of there and be successful at it, but when you hand in your materials to the label. If you I have to say that the people I’ve met who are juniors work in Pro Tools fundamentally, if they load that into and seniors really have a lot on the ball. To sort of a computer and open up Pro Tools, everything that find out where they were at the first couple of you do is laid out for them right there. There were all sessions, I asked them to write me critiques of three these threads about what you should do, and I tried very important records, and I was very impressed with to hold back for a while, and then I finally wrote in. the way that they listen to music, both in terms of From my point of view, that’s the most ridiculous production technique, as well as in terms of who the thing I ever heard of, because music is a constantly artist is and what the intent of the record is. Their morphing thing. If you do a certain kind of record, answers were very acute and very well developed. maybe the settings you used for one song you can use for the whole record, but people were saying, “Well Is there anything that you want to touch on that we haven’t gotten to? they’re getting get my magic EQ, my kick drum settings, my vocal settings.” Nobody can possibly The one thing that’s important to me when I talk to people coming up as engineers is that it’s really copy stuff you do because you approach it differently. important to understand that we are facilitators. Once There are zillions of little tangible and intangible you get into that mind-set, you become much more things that make things come out in the way that effective both for yourself as well as your clients. they do. So yeah, I have really no secrets because I Remember that you are helping people along their really think that it’s a matter of the whole picture, not way, and if you really open yourself and listen and try any one thing we do. to get inside your clients’ heads, several things will Have you had any examples of somebody happen. Number one, they will trust you and will going back into your mix and always be back. Number two, you’ll never have to tweaking? close the door after a session and say, “God, I’m glad That’s a good question. I don’t think so. I think when they that’s over!” We know in reality that it doesn’t always haven’t liked the mixes they’ve actually redone them. work like that, but to me that is one of the jobs of Do they come to you for that? the engineer. That’s why some people are very, very No, that’s the whole idea. They didn’t like it. [laughter] successful at it, because they have a way with people Sometimes, if they don’t like something I’ll be asked
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that makes the working relationship better, so it doesn’t become a drag. The real issue is how you suss out your clients, the artists, and how you work your knowledge as an engineer in a way that’s the most complimentary to that. If you approach it like that, it never, ever gets boring. It’s nice to have done projects that get a lot of notoriety, and people like the way I do things, but the real deal is having amazingly positive interactions with the artists who I’ve worked with who are all wonderful people in their own right.
Are there any particular relationships with artists that you’ve especially enjoyed or that were standout experiences? All of the artists I have worked with are really wonderful people, and most of them very singular and unique artists. It’s been a nice karma for me. From A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul to Me’shell to Erykah Badu, D’Angelo - it taught me that there are certain people that stand out from the pack. I have found that the best projects and the truly groundbreaking artists have been the ones who you can’t describe quickly, because they are doing something new and different. To do something in a way that hasn’t really been done before, and to have it be compelling, to get an emotional reaction on our part – that’s wonderful. But they have all been wonderful. I value my time with these people and value their friendship as well. I’m fortunate. Because I mix, and because I generally have as much work as I need doing that, I pick my production projects really carefully. I pick them if it seems like a good marriage, and a good marriage includes a certain intangible about the way people go about their business, plus things of musical interest to me where I think I can help them. There’s a lot of artists who have come through who have a real unique way of doing things that they don’t need me for and I don’t want to be there if that is the case. I’ve walked on some really famous records part way through, only because they really wanted to do it themselves and I value my relationship with them in terms of honesty – real honesty and trust – much too much to just sit around and collect money and show up once and a while. r www.bobpower.com Allen Farmelo is a producer, mixer and engineer in NYC (www.farmelo.com). He’d like to thank Matthew Agoglia for his help with the transcription.
By David Weiss, photo by
Virginia
Steve Puntolillo and his Sonicraft
Kamenitzer
It got to the point where it became as important to me to see how you could get a recording and capture that content as it was to play the music itself. That was really a big shift for me. I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so if I wanted to learn how a piece of audio gear worked, I would buy it, hook it up, experiment with it and then I would sell it so I could buy the next piece. It was an empirical process to get from, “What is this stuff? How does it connect and interact?” to the point where I was helping people to wire their studios together. Later I was working with a company called Audiotechniques, which at the time was NYC’s premier pro audio dealership, and I got to the point where I was spec’ing out entire recording studios. Eventually I started a studio with some friends. I moved on from that, but it was a good engineering experience, with bands moving in and out constantly.
Didn’t you drop out of audio engineering entirely for a while? I was a little bit burned out after I got out of the studio. The LinnDrum came out and then MTV and I said, “I don’t really know if I want to do this.” You could see where MTV took music, and the LinnDrum was the start, to me, of programmed music. I decided to do something else entirely, and I got out of pro audio and into computers, where I ramped up really, really quickly and started building graphics systems. Eventually, I did sales, marketing and PR for a computer graphics software company. But, after some pretty decent success with all that, I did an executive bailout, because I wanted to go back into audio. While I was doing all this computing, great sound and listening to music had become my hobby. In this room [now the Sonicraft studio] were a pair of Urei 813 monitors, some couches and an outrageous listening environment. It was my no-stress zone. But that also started an inquiry: With the advent of audio CDs, there was no excuse, in my mind, why the sound of a recording shouldn’t be the same as it was in the control room. Before that, vinyl intrinsically changed the sound of the recording - I don’t care who mastered it, vinyl sounds different from tape playback. They’re just not the same, and I prefer tape playback. With CDs, they’re transferring the masters right onto CD - I should hear just what the control room engineer heard. But a lot of times in my “control room” environment, CDs sounded dead, or cloudy or grainy and nasty. This started a search for me: I had to learn all about digital audio to find out why some CDs sounded good and others didn’t.
If the good men and women of NASA What was the pivotal event in starting you on the path of audio engineering? who put the Hubble Telescope together were ever to visit Sonicraft in Freehold, I heard playback in a studio control room in, I’d guess it New Jersey, they just may come away was 1968. That was a totally mind-blowing experience ashamed of the shoddy work they’d done. for me because I’d never heard what music could That’s because there resides the Sonicraft sound like straight off tape on a really good A2DX (analog-to-digital transfer) lab, monitoring system before. I was like, “Oh my god, it That’s a deep question. built to astonishing specs and capable of could sound like that?!?” And what did it actually sound like? Yeah! This was in 1995 or so, and a huge help was Bob what creator Steve Puntolillo calls the Like nothing I’d ever heard before. I’d only had basic Katz’s Digital Domain website [www.digido.com]. I “ultimate A/D analog-to-digital transfer.” record turntables until then, so to hear the sound of started to say, “I don’t like the way these CDs sound, Originally simply a sound maven with a control room - I just couldn’t believe my ears. I was so I want to fix them.” So I started capturing CDs extra-sharp ears, Puntolillo became a man hooked. My primary reason for being in recording back into the computer to remaster them so they’d be who realized that the path to incredible studios up to that point was playing drums in them, the way I wanted them. The other thing I did was I digital audio begins with incredible but once I heard that playback, the music playback went out and found an old Ampex tape machine so I analog capabilities. Thus began the quest system became very important to me. I started trying could get some of my old tapes and mixes onto CD. for an obsessive method to transfer that to build my own speakers, upgrading what I had to So I had this little mastering chain, a tape machine sound from the realm of tape to the realm listen on, and what began to take over was the whole and a computer running digital audio, and some of my of bits and sample rates. process of recording, playback and listening to music. friends that were still in the audio or media business
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started saying, “Can you do this or that?” They started bringing me work, and before I know it I’m archiving all the tapes from the John Cage Trust, doing soundtracks and sound design for AT&T’s multimedia productions and CD mastering too. So I woke up one day and realized I’m in business. I let the day gig go nine years ago and decided to name the business Sonicraft, feeling there was a need to emphasize that great sound is a craft.
Is that when the A2DX analog-to-digital transfer lab was founded? That’s when the concept basically arose. At that time, I had the capability of transferring up to 1/2” 4-track, but I didn’t really need to be able to transfer any more than two tracks as a mastering engineer. Then two things happened. One of them was I looked at my 2track machine and said, “This really needs to be a killer machine, because any serious mastering engineer that masters from analog tape has to have a way of playing tape that is beyond average.” Otherwise, why would you go to them? Right? So it became sort of a quest of, “How good can I get this 2-track machine to sound?” as I looked for ways to improve the machine and the signal path. Then in the middle of all this, I had a client, that wanted to master a surround DVD here. His artist was based in Santa Fe, and he had sent his 1” 8-track tape to my client in NYC, who was going to supervise the mix session. I wasn’t set up to transfer that format, and to make a long story short, we went through an incredible ordeal to get the transfer accomplished. We figured there would be great facilities to do that in NYC, but the fact of the matter was the best of the best - and we’re talking about a huge studio with a world-class reputation here - did a job that was totally unacceptable. It turned out that there was really no place in the area that was equipped to do such an essential task at a high level of quality, and maybe even passable. When we got the transfers, we discovered they hadn’t even bothered to decode the dbx noise reduction! After a night of pure insanity tracking down the right decoders in the middle of New Jersey, repairing them and running the transfers through them, we finally had eight tracks of decoded audio ready to go. It was the middle of the night by the time everyone left. I sat on the stairs and I remember clear as day saying to myself, “Somebody needs to do this right.” Then the thought went through my mind, “Why don’t you do it?” But it seemed like too huge a job. I realized that to do it right meant that the same type of madness I had already put into my 2-track machine had to go into a machine with up to 24 tracks. It’s hard enough to get two tracks to audiophile grade - to do it right with 24 tracks is a tremendous undertaking.
So what changed your mind? I initially dismissed it as too expensive and timeconsuming, but the idea sat there like an itch in my psyche. And there were some breakthroughs that I found when I was working on this Ampex 440 2-track I had. One of them was certain changes I could make in the signal path. Another one was that there was a significant uptick in quality when I changed to Flux
each of the two A2DX MM1200s. After we reassembled Magnetics heads. Another one was that Bob Starr of each machine, we adjusted it, aligned it, tested it and RTZ Audio had developed a replacement repro card evaluated its overall operations. I don’t use the term that would work in the 440 that basically kept all of “audiophile” lightly, but all of the critical components the great Class A discrete transistor single-ended are audiophile-grade. The playback amplifiers, for design of the original Ampex line amps, but replaced example, have Lundahl input transformers, all of the components with today’s devices which are, Roederstein metal film resistors and capacitors by in point of fact, much better. He even put Lundahl Wima and Panasonic, and lower distortion and transformers in these things. So between the changes additional headroom to accommodate the extended to the signal path, the flux heads and the RTZ cards, response of the Flux Magnetics ME heads. I was getting playback from the 440 that was really, really exciting. It was pure and transparent, but It sounds like you spent extra time with pleasing - never harsh, but smooth, open and clear. the heads… And I began to think to myself, “You know, a (2” 24- We did. Every single part of the tape path was examined track) Ampex MM1200 uses the same audio circuitry and questioned to bring the audio performance of this as a 440. So what would happen if I got one of those machine to the highest possible level, and the heads and made all these same improvements, and you were obviously a huge part of that. Before we get to multiply all this wonderfulness times 24 tracks?” I had that, our decision to upgrade the head assemblies with an idea it was going to be good, but no idea how an ATR Services modification, which replaces three good it was going to be. static guides in the tape path with precision rolling guides, is a good example of our approach. A mod like Is there a reason you picked the Ampex this is extremely important to the sound quality. When MM1200? tape passes over a static surface, the friction between There were four primary ones. First off, of course, was the tape and the surface sets up a resonant vibration the sound quality: the MM1200’s playback amplifiers of the tape - like a violin bow on a string - which are discrete, Class A single-ended, and plugging in the clouds up the sound. It’s called “scrape flutter”. By RTZ amps made them truly audiophile quality. It also replacing the static guides with rollers, we were able uses a capstan and pinch roller design that gives it a to significantly reduce scrape flutter, and that results very high degree of control over tape motion and in markedly better signal clarity, as well as reducing speed. Thirdly, the design itself is very stress on tapes. At this point, we realized we really straightforward, which means it’s more open to were on the verge of achieving extremely high modifications, as well as boding well for future accuracy, transparency and purity in our transfers, reliability. Lastly, there’s some excellent resources out which was the goal all along. There’s a genius I’d there that continue to make advances in the worked with in the past, John French of JRF Magnetic components that are available. So all those factors Sciences, that I called again to build the ultimate head made the Ampex MM1200 the primary candidate for assemblies. He built, customized or restored all of the the countless man-hours of testing and prototyping many head assemblies we use here. For many of these that we would go on to subject our A2DX machine to. we chose hand-built Flux Magnetics ME playback The restoration sounds like an involved heads. These heads are designed and hand-built by process. Greg Orton, and made an incredible difference versus Well, really, it’s a never-ending process, but here’s what stock heads. They provide a full extra bottom octave we did. First was fleshing out the platform itself, and ultra-flat, low-frequency response when operating which began by purchasing three complete MM1200s. at 30 ips, and no matter what playback speed we’re Each one of those was given an exhaustive talking about, there’s benefits all over the audio evaluation, part by part, until the best parts from all spectrum. We got flattened and extended low and high three machines had been selected for the final build. After that, we took them outside of their host frequency response, tighter bottom end and overall machines and fully reconditioned them, although gains in clarity. There’s a page on my website sometimes we replaced them with newer versions. The (www.sonicraft.com/a2dx/a2dx_tech.html) that goes MM1200 that was in the best condition overall was into greater detail about all this, but the point is that earmarked as the final platform, disassembled and anywhere we could find that would result in an cleaned inch by inch - that includes the wiring improvement in clarity - great or small - we harnesses and all electrical contacts, plus cosmetic implemented. All those improvements add up in a big restoration as well. One key step in the custom wiring way at the final output. of the chassis was the installation of switches to allow You’ve done this with more than 2” 24the machine’s meters and transformers to be switched track format though, right? in or out of the signal path at the output stage. We It’s easier to say what formats we can’t handle at the can also easily switch between a stock Ampex head A2DX lab at this point. We had to cover as many bases and a Flux Magnetics ME head. As a result, our clients as possible, because a lot of times, people come to us can choose between a classic “Ampex” sound or one with projects that were recorded on more than one that’s best described as more pure or transparent - as kind of tape format. We didn’t want to have to turn identical as possible to what actually came off of the people away because we could only transfer part of console during the recording session. Between their project. The MM1200s have 2” 24-track, 2” 16upgrades to the signal path and reliability upgrades, track, 1” 16-track and 1” 8-track capabilities. We have we changed well over one thousand capacitors in a completely restored “Bridgeport” Scully Model 284
52/Tape Op#60/Mr. Puntolillo/(Continued on page 54)
recorder that has three OEM head assemblies so we can handle 1” 8-track, 1” 4track, and even 1” 12-track. An amazing Ampex MR-70, which may be the bestsounding vacuum tube analog tape recorder ever is on hand for 1/2” three-track. And, by the way, we’re not yet done with MR70s, and so on. There’s currently more than fifteen different machines in operation, not counting backup machines and over 40 head assemblies. Then, there are all of the project studio type smaller formats, and the list goes on and on - again, it’s all on the website with lots of pictures and detailed information. Basically, if it’s an open-reel analog tape we can transfer it, and at the best possible quality.
What are the considerations after the audio leaves the tape machine? The next thing is noise reduction. If it was used on the tape, what’s the use of handling somebody’s transfer if you can’t decode the noise reduction? When you try to decode the tapes and the noise reduction system is not the same vintage as the one it was made on, does that matter or not? Noise reduction is an encode/decode process, where dynamics - with respect to frequencies - are compressed during the encoding, then expanded again during decoding, which is when any errors you make in playback are going to be much more noticeable. That’s what makes the accuracy of the Sonicraft machines so important, because if your playback machine is less than optimal, it can cause artifacts like pumping and breathing, or even cause your decoder to mistrack, which is bad with a capital “B”. We listened to a ton of decoding systems, and came away equipped with 24-track racks of Dolby A, Dolby SR, dbx Type I, and Telcom C4 - and with the A2DX machines in the path, these decoders do the best job they can possibly do.
I’m sure everyone wants to see your wiring scheme. You can’t go this far and then forget about the wires! All the runs here are short, discrete, with the heaviest gauge Mogami cable out there. The patch bays and patch cords are hand-soldered and 1/4” military-spec, and we power the analog equipment using an extremely high quality isolation transformer. The connections between the analog-todigital converters and the capture workstations are optical, which keeps the electrical systems of the analog gear isolated from the computer.
Your converters were supplied by another NYC-area mad scientist... Michal Jurewicz! The Mytek 8X96 converters are amazing - they’re the crucial last link in bringing the audio home into the workstations. I had Michal modify ours to have mastering-style stepped attenuators on each channel.
What’s the mindset you need to have to evaluate your systems to such a fine degree? You’re looking at the signal path and what’s in it. What’s this audio touching? Basically it’s a process where you look at what the key points in the signal path are. Is the audio traveling through a coupling capacitor or a transformer, for example? What effect is that having on the audio? Good effect? Bad effect? No effect? And no effect is perfectly acceptable, although nothing has no effect, by the way - it just might be negligible. A lot of times you’ll find that there’s just one particular component that, for whatever reason, maybe they just couldn’t make it well enough back then, or maybe the manufacturer decided not to spend a lot of money and you say, “If the audio is going to go through this thing or be affected by it, what happens if I put a better one in, or just a different one?” Or, “What if I go around this thing?” So you look at each stage of where the audio is going and say, “Is this helping us or hurting us?” And you try it. The transformers are an excellent example of this. Transformers usually have a sonic signature, and you can change the sound of the machine by changing the transformer. Or you can bypass them. The question then becomes, “Do you want what they do to the signal or do you not?” In the case of the MM1200, I have a switchable bypass to the output transformer of that machine, which is one of the things that gives the MM1200 that “MM1200 sound”. But by bypassing it, you get an almost audiophile type of rendering, so it becomes a question - “Do you want a stamp on that transfer that says MM1200, or do you want something that’s closer to what’s really on the tape?” By default, I opt for what’s really on the tape, but if someone says, “I want it to sound like it came off of the MM1200,” I just have to flip 24 switches, which is no big deal.
I’m interested in what you learned about what constitutes a positive, upgraded signal path as you did this?
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Well, the definition of that is different things to different people, but I deemed something an improvement if, I after I did it, I could hear more than I could before. Here’s a concrete example: Let’s suppose you have a recording of acoustic instruments. You change components on the tape transfer machine, and now you hear more of a sense
As Steve Puntolillo readily acknowledges, an entire crew of talented people with extra-sharp ears helped to launch the A2DX Lab. Here they are in alphabetical order: Nejat Bakin - Audio Technologies - “Nejat is an audio design guru with a line of world-class, custom built tube gear. Since a machine’s power supply is the foundation of how it sounds, to make sure it was done right, I asked Nejat to do all of the restoration on the power supplies and filtering in the A2DX MM1200s.” www.audiotechnologies.com Carl Farruggia - Crimson Pro Audio - “Carl is an ace at fixing equipment and worked his magic on several of the lab’s restorations. He’s not afraid to tackle anything. I learned a lot just from watching him.” www.crimsonproaudio.com John K. Chester - “Try to picture an absolutely brilliant person, seasoned by decades of practical audio design and repair experience and the kind of ear that can take over where the best test equipment leaves off.” John French - JRF Magnetics - “Although John is primarily known for his outstanding ability to assemble, modify, build and recondition heads and head assemblies, his contributions go far beyond tape recorder heads. We could never have built this place without his experience, support, insight and generous outpouring of knowledge.” www.jrfmagnetics.com Philip Jost - Audio Technologies - “Phil is great guy with a passion for clean power and what that can do. Starting where the power enters the building, he went through this place installing isolation transformers, line filters and upgrades to the AC wiring and connectors to make sure the power is clean. Sometimes he kept right on going all the way into a machine’s power supply and beyond.” www.audiotechnologies.com Michal Jurewicz - Mytek Digital - “Michal designed and built our 24 tracks of A2D conversion. He also made modifications to give us mastering grade stepped gain and attenuation on each channel. I’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of A2D and D2A conversion from this kind and brilliant man.” www.mytekdigital.com Bob Katz - Digital Domain - “Bob has been incredibly generous with his vast knowledge of the practical considerations of ultra high-end analog and digital reproduction.” www.digido.com George LaForgia - Formerly of Ampex Tech Support and Quantegy - “Besides being a crackerjack troubleshooter for both transports and electronics, he’s probably baked more tapes than anyone else in the world. George has been a teacher, tech mentor and repair wizard.” Bob Ligotino - Sonicraft A2DX Lab - “Literally thousands of squeaky clean connections, new capacitors and impeccable soldering points later, here we are. If not for Bob, we’d still be looking at a pile of parts.” www.sonicraft.com/a2dx Greg Orton - Flux Magnetics - “Greg has designed and hand crafted many of the incredible heads used in the lab. His work is impeccable. Besides that, he has gone the extra mile, providing expert consultation on modifications and upgrades to erase, record and repro circuitry.” www.fluxmagnetics.com Paul Prestopino - Record Plant Remote - “‘Presto’ is a legend in the business and knows the MM1200 inside and out. He is best known for his technical work at the Record Plant and with Record Plant Remote. Paul saved me a lot of mistakes by coming down when we were first getting started and making sure we were pointed in the right direction.” www.recordplantremote.com Bill Schlegel - International Recording Corporation - “Bill is responsible for the truly wondrous rebuilding and updating of the MR70 transports used in the A2DX Lab.” www.internationalrecordingcorp.com Mike Spitz and Andrew Bingham - ATR Services Inc. - “Mike and Andrew are the wizards who improved and rebuilt our Ampex ATR 102. Also, Mike was the first person I know of to ‘rollerize’ the MM1200 tape path, with the many benefits that provides.” www.atrservice.com Bob Starr - RTZ Professional Audio - “Besides providing expert advice on component selection for restoration work, Bob designed and hand-built the wonderful RTZ discrete Class A record and playback amplifiers used at the Sonicraft A2DX Lab.” www.rtzaudio.com Other mentors and contributors have been: David Blake - Fox Recording Studio, Mike Bogen - Dale Pro Audio, Cary Cornett - Cornett Technical Services, Jeff Gilman - MDA Precision Motor Works, Dana Hathaway - Access Audio Services, Richard Hess - Vignettes Media, Joel Katz Broadway Sound, John Klett - Tech Mecca, Inc., Bill Lund - formerly 3M, Dale Manquen, formerly Ampex & 3M, Michael MacDonald - AlgoRhythms, NYC, Jay McKnight - formerly Ampex, now Magnetic Reference Laboratory, Larry Miller - formerly Ampex, David Ollard, Andrew Roberts - Purple Audio Inc and a host of incredible people from Howard Sanner’s Ampex List (http://www.recordist.com), who generously shared their knowledge and sometimes dug up impossible to find parts. I wish I could list them all. -SP
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of the room that it was done in. There’s clearly more information than there was before. Every time I took a step closer to being live in the space that it was recorded, I chose that. So the before-and-after comparisons of these machines is that someone took a blanket off of the speakers. If you prefer the blanket-over-the-speakers sound, you may disagree with some of the decisions I made, and some people might. If you later want to do things to the sound to make it less clear, go ahead. You can always do that, but my goal is, “How close to the clarity of what’s on the tape can I get to?” I have a 24-track tape here the last tape I did before I exited the studio business in 1984 - and I remember during the recording I was driving the engineer crazy because I wanted to hear harmonics and a tactile-ness in the instruments, and during playback it was all sounding dead to me. With the mix I did back then, I felt I was fighting an uphill battle to get the vibrancy and life out of the recording that I wanted. When I did the first transfer through the A2DX MM1200 and brought it up in my mix environment, everything I had fought and struggled to EQ and never really achieved was just sitting there waiting for me. It was like a whole different recording. Now I was shocked in a whole new way. I thought, “How many tapes are out there with this sound locked in there that no one’s ever heard?”
So who’s calling you for transfers? Where does the business come from? We do have the actual owners of the tapes calling us directly. More often we’re being called by recording studio owner/managers who have a client with analog tapes and they don’t have the particular format of playback machine that the tapes are. We provide them with the files that they need to keep working with the project so that they don’t have to turn that client and their business away. We’re also getting some record label work and some independent engineers and music producers.
What have you discovered in your quest for pristine analog sound - and therefore pristine digital sound that might be useful to other audio engineers who might want to get a little more obsessed themselves? The succinct answer is that good sound is not necessarily about spending money, it’s about spending time. It’s all in the little details, just looking at your tools and each step along the way, putting aside all the hype and superstition of what is and isn’t supposed to work and really listening for yourself, detail by detail. Because what happens is that old cliché about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts: As you go through your whole method from the condition of the gear to the plugs in your wall to the speaker position - and you work on these things, the quality goes up and up, and you reach a point where it gets harder and harder to make improvements. You keep refining and refining - as you clear away the negatives you’re left with the positives, and the result can be a slap in the face better than what you started out with. r www.sonicraft.com/a2dx
56/Tape Op#60/Mr. Puntolillo/(Fin.)
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Focal Solo6 Be active monitors The French company Focal has dominated the audiophile speaker market since its inception in the 1970s. Today, Focal helps to form what I consider to be a vanguard of studio monitor designers who are quickly catching up with the ever-increasing resolution, bandwidth, and dynamic range of modern audio by systematically reducing distortion—and the resultant coloration—generated by amps and speakers. With the Solo6 Be model, Focal has aimed to bring their cutting-edge technology to a reasonable price-point ($2000 pair, street). The Solo6 is an oddball in the Focal line of professional studio monitors for appearing so traditional—a smallish rectangular cabinet with a round tweeter mounted above a 6.5’’ woofer and a bass port across the bottom of the cabinet. However, the Solo6 Be packs in most of Focal’s innovative designs, and it’s good to know that they’ve cut no corners with this speaker to meet the price point. The cabinet consists of 19 mm MDF panels with internal braces with real red veneer on the sides. At 24 lbs each, they’re hefty for their size. On the back panel are the XLR input jack; IEC power cord socket; +4 dBu or -10 dBV operating level switch; and recessed high and low frequency contour pots set at 5 kHz and 150 Hz respectively, offering plus or minus 3 dB of adjustment for room tuning. The tweeter is an inverted beryllium dome. At an astonishing 25 microns thick, it is capable of reproducing frequencies up to 40 kHz at a velocity nearly three times that of titanium. Focal designed this tweeter to avoid the comb-filtering that results from nonconcentric tweeter and super-tweeter pairings. A generous 100 Watt Class-AB amplifier powers the tweeter. The woofer is made with Focal’s W-Cone technology, a foam core sandwiched between two thin woven-glass tissues. The W-Cone provides an unprecedented stiffness-to-mass ratio that, to my ears, results in far less coloration of the low-end signal. If these woofers have a signature sound, it’s a distinctive lack of distortion. The 150 Watt BASH amp that powers the woofer is the only component not built at the Focal factory and is licensed from Indigo. BASH amps have been designed to accommodate the heavy work of delivering the power needed at frequencies as low as 20 Hz while staying cool and small enough to work in an enclosed speaker. (To learn more, visit www.bashaudio.com.) So, while not looking all that tricked out at first, the Solo6 Be obviously packs in a lot of innovative, proprietary technology that sets it apart from other monitors in its class.
58/Tape Op#60/Gear Reviews
Like many independent producers and engineers, I work in both larger commercial studios and my own studio. These days, I mostly work at my studio in Brooklyn, where I have been working on a pair of ADAM P11As, and at Mavericks Studio in Manhattan. Last winter, Mavericks installed Barefoot MM27s (see my review in Tape Op #58). The accuracy and reach of the MM27s seriously raised the bar for what I expect out of a pair of speakers. Rumor had it that Focals could sound close to the Barefoots, especially in the low-end detail and overall transparency. I was very curious to learn whether the Focal Solo6 Be, a speaker considerably smaller and less expensive (about the same size and price as the P11As), could deliver the kind of sonic information I’d come to expect from a studio monitor. If so, I might have found the perfect counterpart to the Barefoots for my own studio. One benchmark question I now use when determining the transparency of monitors is, “How different do different records sound from one another?” The way I see it, if records sound similar in color, tonality, frequency response, stereo imaging, and/or depth of field, then something is consistently coloring—and homogenizing—the sound with its own sonic characteristics. According to the theory, the greater the difference between the sound of two records, the more accurately the speaker is representing the recording. Listening to a bunch of records through the Focals immediately revealed one very important thing; the unique sonic character of the low-end on different records was very easy to hear. Kick drums and bass guitars had as much detail in texture and color as the highs and mids, and not just the string and fret sounds of the bass, or the attack of the kick drum, but the contours of the low frequencies. One way to describe it is that I could actually hear the lack of distortion in the low end, which meant that I could hear what was really on the record. Even at high volumes, the low end was distinctly undistorted. Another great surprise is that if you turn the Solo6s down to a whisper, the low-end impact stays intact and sounds full-range. This consistency at different volumes made it possible to monitor quietly for longer periods of time, without worrying that the low end had strayed—good news for any eardrums. The “different records test” showed off the detail and transparency of the Solo6’s mids and highs, too. The tweeters sound airy, presenting the space and dimension around high-end sounds, but in no way did they seem hyped. The detail and clarity of the beryllium tweeter is uncannily well matched to the W-Cone, making for a very balanced, unified listening experience up and down the entire frequency spectrum. Different records certainly sounded quite different—for me an important factor in affirming the transparency of the Solo6 Be. Next, I checked out some of my recent mixes. I was relieved to hear that they sounded the way I had intended them to, though there were some new discoveries. Upon hearing one of my mixes for the Portland, Oregon band Time Farmer, I noticed that the ride cymbal wasn’t carrying the excitement of the song as much as I’d thought, and the acoustic guitar seemed to have more to say in the upper highs; at the same time I could hear more subtle changes in the ride’s overtones as the drummer changed his approach. There just seemed to be plenty of space in the stereo field for all the different high-end details going on. In the midrange, the snare on the same song had more of a lower-mid “poof” to it than I had thought, not quite cutting through the guitars. Rechecking it on other systems, this seemed to be the way it was translating—another indication that there’s little hype in the high-end with these speakers.
Next, I tried remixing a Time Farmer song, aiming to add some dimension and groove to an up-tempo tune. I decided to soak some electric guitars in long delays running though an automated sweeping band-pass filter that fed a spring reverb. The idea was to add depth by building an almost subliminally shifting sonic backdrop. On the Solo6’s, I was able to hear very subtle changes in both the bandpass filter’s frequency and in the reverb tails, and I was really digging that inverted beryllium dome tweeter during this mix. To cajole the groove a bit, I played with compressors on the bass guitar, overheads, and a mult’ed snare track. Very subtle changes to the attack and release settings were easy to hear across the whole frequency spectrum. For rock, I tend to mix with an API 2500 bus compressor strapped to the mix bus, and I love the different sonic characteristics this unit can impart on a mix. Like the “different records test”, the differences between the various compressor settings on the API were blatant on the Solo6s. In fact, I fiddle less with the API while working on the Focals because the settings I want to use seem pretty obvious after trying just a few different combinations. With the Focals on hand, I had a chance to track and mix a tune with producer Art Hays. Tracking to tape at 15 IPS and monitoring on the Barefoots, we recorded a droning bass chord in D (fundamentals around 140 Hz and 300 Hz) and an un-muffled double-skinned bass drum tuned to resonate an octave below (at roughly 70 Hz). The lowend chord produced by the bass and kick drum coming off of tape was a rich, warm woof on the Barefoots, but as you might guess, this could be a sticky glob of low-end schmootz on less capable systems. This was a great test case for the Solo6s; if I could hear into that low-end situation clearly, I could hopefully EQ out some of the inevitable mush, while maintaining the resonant frequencies that made up the chord. While the Solo6s obviously didn’t reproduce the same sub content as the Barefoots, the clarity in the low end was stunningly similar, which put a big smile on my face. Next, I tracked a Telecaster over the top of our rhythm section. The openness of the tweeters really spelled out where to place the mic in order to maintain the Tele’s snap while steering clear of the harsher side of the tone. Again, the mix went swiftly and is translating nicely on laptops, ear-buds, and other real-world playback systems. I’ve done a lot more mixing, tracking and listening on the Solo6s, and my impressions have remained consistently positive. (For more examples see the unabridged version of this review at www.farmelo.com.) Most significantly, the Solo6s have sped up and helped my mixing. When I can really hear what’s up with the low-end tones, and the stereo placements are accurate, and the reverb tails are obvious, and the top end is wide open, it’s just easier and more fun to mix. Similarly, spotting an issue and finding a solution is easier, faster and less worrisome. I’m thrilled with how changes in mix-bus processing are rendered, especially tonal changes from my trusted hardware units. Most importantly, music I’ve tracked and mixed on these speakers is translating positively on all kinds of systems in the outside world, a clear indication that Focal designed a killer studio monitor with the Solo6 Be. For the money, I don’t know of another speaker with this kind of low-end clarity and overall transparency. I’m happily keeping them in my studio as the best complement to the Barefoot MM27s I’ve yet to hear. If you get a chance, definitely check them out. ($2190 pair MSRP; www.focalprofessional.com) –Allen Farmelo www.farmelo.com.
Brauner VMX tube mic I have always been curious about the Brauner microphones. I have seen the name for a while now, and the fact that Klaus Heyne got involved with this company, when any company would probably be glad to collaborate with such a man on a microphone, really piqued my interest. Brauner seems to make microphones not to a price point so much as making a microphone that is great and as fully realized a design as they can at a price point. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that the VMX is very, very nice. It’s a large-diaphragm condenser with a freely adjustable pickup pattern, Class-A tube amplification, and VOVOX conductors (Tape Op #59). I happened to get the mic the day that Bernie Worrell of Parliament fame loaded into Studio G in Brooklyn to do some stuff with me engineering and playing with him. This was something I was freaking out about. I love everything that this guy has ever played on. He turned out to be an amazing person, which was icing on the cake. I was recording some drums, some organ, some bass, some guitar, and some vocals. We didn’t have a ton of time for all this, so I started out with the mics I rely on all the time: Neumann U 47s, Neumann M 49s, and a few more obscure modern gems like the Sage Electronics Bova Ball. Drums were mic’ed up, and I usually use one of the 47s for a center ambient microphone about 4 ft back from the kit, dead center, at chest height. I decided to replace that mic with the VMX for this session, just to start out trying the thing on drum room, in a position I know well, in a room I know well, and where a U 47 normally sits on almost every session I do these days. First things first, I take the thing out of the beautiful case, and everything looks amazing. Even the way the thing sits in the box commands respect! The shockmount is a thing of beauty… so I thought. Everything is really well made, just like you would expect from German engineers… then I tried to put the mic up. Tried. The shockmount is totally weird. I couldn’t figure out how the frig to get the damn microphone into the shockmount! Awesome—makes you feel cool when one of your heroes is on the couch, and you are like wrestling for your life out in the live room. I actually moved the stand to where nobody could see me swearing and poking at the shockmount like an ape with a robot in the room. I finally figured it out; the two dots on the weird tension ring thingies at each end of the shock have to be lined up for the mic to slide in. Clever? Annoying. It worked well once the part of my brain that enjoyed Rubik’s Cubes in seventh grade kicked in. Then I realized that the lever arm on the shockmount was spring loaded, so no matter where I put it, I could then move it ten more times to try and get a good grip on it to reposition. It does hold the mic really, really well; I just didn’t bank on such a steep learning curve to put a mic on a stand. I was bumming on how overly clever everything seemed to be… but I was still unprepared for the pop screen, which I wanted to have ready in preparation for tracking vocals immediately after the basics. The pop screen is beautiful. It looks like a mid-century modern lampshade that could have been designed by Herman Miller and Gyro Gearloose in a first-ever cartoon-character, furniture-designer collaboration. This thing drove me mental. It looks awesome, but then I realized that I had to take the little thumbscrew thingies all the way out of the screen just to push the two leg things into the shockmount and then thread the two little thumbscrew thingies back in through the
shockmount into the pop screen leg thingies. I instantly dropped one of the thumbscrew thingies and was swearing again. I knew that I would lose at least one of the little thumbscrew things if I had to use this mic over and over. So then I patch all the preamps and finally start feeling like I kind of know what I am doing again when I hear the sounds I am getting—all fun to listen to, and something that appeals to the lizard brain that seems to have taken over in me. Then I push up the Brauner. It really sounds good. Really. It was more balanced across the entire spectrum than my U 47 and more “gleamy” and open. The transient response felt fast and light, like you might expect from something with a little less mass swinging around inside the basket than a U 47. (I don’t even know if this is true, but it feels that way.) As I reflect on this microphone, and its possible audience and user, I can’t help but think that an investment of this type—$6000 for a top drawer microphone—is a tough decision. This is why so many people wind up with a bunch of classic Neumann mics in their locker and collection. You can count on a classic Neumann to accrue value, even sitting on the shelf. The Brauner VMX is beautiful and sounds amazing, but will it hold its value? Will you be able to use this amazing tool for recording, knowing that in a darker time, you could sell this thing and get out of it what you put in? I personally wouldn’t freak out about that too much, but I can see why the $1000–$2000 condenser market has gone cuckoo; it does not require a lifelong quest for quality, or a dedication to having the best tools for your recordings. A $1500 microphone is an upper-level hobby purchase. With that said, the VMX may be one of your favorites on a day-to-day basis in the studio. It sounds good on lots of things, and it’s very well made. Are you an artist? Are you truly passionate about recording? If you are, this could be one of your favorite tools. I love recording. I love music. I love great tools for recording, and I like this mic. If you want an emotionally engaging experience, and not an academic treatise on frequency response, you probably will like it too. The VMX sounds like whatever you put in front of it, only more flattering. I liked it everywhere you would expect to like a tube-based LDC. The quality of the sound is really cool— like a smooth, flattering, 3D picture of the event in progress. In front of a very nice vocal, it really sounded great. It was not the mic for that vocal because I wanted the vocal to sit in a different way than the VMX was gonna give me. I went with an M 49 instead, because it wasn’t so gleamy in the top end. For acoustic guitar, however, the Brauner made the cut even with a C 12, a U 47, an M 49, and a CMV 563 up on stands. I am pretty lazy, and sometimes I will record every overdub with whatever is on stands from the basics, especially when it is me doing the playing, but I wanted to put this mic through some paces. On the Leslie cabinet, I thought the VMX was also a bit gleamy. I don’t like “toppy” mics, and I wouldn’t call the Brauner toppy, but I would say it has a sheen to it on top that can really give an acoustic guitar some shine in a dense mix, or could poke a male vocal out past some hefty guitars. When I tried it for a male vocal in a dense mix, I felt it was a little too shimmery for that track—like too much breath—though not too much “ess”, which was interesting. This is a microphone of quality, and it’s a great choice as your one big bruiser of a LDC, especially if you hear things in a gleamy way. This mic can put sparkly lip gloss on a gorilla, and what else can be said after that? ($6259 MSRP; www.braunermicrophones.de) –Joel Hamilton, www.joelhamiltonrecording.com
Pearlman Church, TM-1 & TM-2 tube mics There are legends in microphone technology, and there are legends in microphone technology. Everyone has surely heard about the legendary U 47 microphone, but have you heard about the U 47 Church microphone? The legend goes something like this. On a smoky movie set on an MGM soundstage sometime in the mid-1950s, a director yells “Sound!” A mic boom is lowered, and then “Action!” is called. Clark Gable takes to the set and suddenly begins his dialogue into… a stubby black U 47??? At the time, most people wouldn’t have known what that mic was, but today we know it as the Stanley Church–modified U 47. Stanley Church was the Chief Sound Engineer for MGM studios in the ever-classic 1950s period, and he must have had some gumption to think that he could build a mic better than Neumann could, using some of Neumann’s own parts! Because that is precisely what Stanley Church attempted; he went ahead and ordered a stockpile of U 47 capsules from Neumann (or more likely from Gotham who was the US Neumann distributor) and proceeded to build his own microphone from them. These microphones were designed to use a bit higher power and be more detailed than a standard U 47, perhaps for getting more sound to the tape from a more distant mic placement on a movie set; or maybe Church was just nuts. History would prove Church’s vision valid though, as today these original Church U 47 microphones are rare and found only in the hands of the lucky few with a serious microphone collection. This is because once Neumann got wind of what Stanley Church was doing with their capsule, they proceeded to shut him down—so to speak—letting Church and MGM know in no uncertain terms that they weren’t going to tolerate a Frankenstein version of their microphone being built and distributed to movie studios in Hollywood. In the end, it is rumored that of 200 capsules Church acquired, less than 20 actual Church mics were completed. Talk about rare! In regards to technical specs, beyond the obvious Neumann capsule, Church used a 6072 tube with a Triad transformer and then shoved the messy works into a stout black microphone body. As the years advanced and soundstage microphone technology along with them, the Church mics retired from movie studio use into the hands of most likely the very engineers who used them. Over time, these found their way into some recording studios where they were as good as and sometimes even better than a standard U 47. Thus the legend began. Dave Pearlman of Sherman Oaks, CA is a relative newcomer to the microphone scene. Yet in the past few years, he has turned the boutique microphone industry on its side (or its ear if you would) by designing microphones that capture and emulate the best the U 47 had to offer, and at a price point that can fit the budget of almost any studio, even a home or project studio. Dave began with the TM-1, which uses a custom configuration of capsule, tube (original German), and transformer to create which is in my opinion, the best damn large-diaphragm condenser under $2,000! Capturing the essence of the original vintage U 47s, the Pearlman TM-1 is an amazing microphone, especially on vocals, for the price point of $1,750. To get anything better or closer to a U 47 in an LDC, you’d have to spend at least two to three times as much. Gear Reviews/Tape Op#60/59
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Always looking to innovate, Pearlman began researching the different variants of the U 47 last year and came upon the legend of the Church microphone. Upon confirming its existence and legendary character, Dave used all his secret microphone powers to procure a schematic and parts list of the components used by Stanley Church to build these mics while at MGM Studios. Thus the Pearlman Church microphone was born. This mic uses an actual, original Neumann K 47 capsule, the same used in U 47s the world over, along with a 12AU7 tube (better sounding, Dave found, than the 6072) and an original old Triad tranny, just like Stanley Church’s. Interestingly, Dave Pearlman also has chosen a great looking black body for his whole series of microphones, so the Pearlman Church mic is even more true to its original form. So how does the Pearlman Church mic sound? In a word—amazing! For just a little bit more than the TM-1, the Church mic, at $2500, is the next step up in terms of sound quality and polish. Where this mic really shines is in its top end. The top end is rich and distinct, capturing every essence of the “magic” in a vocal but without being sibilant, even on sibilant singers! A lot of this likely has to do with the Neumann capsule as well, proof once again that they don’t build things like they used to. Therefore, of course there are also only so many Pearlman Church mics that can be built as there are only so many original Neumann capsules to be found, so this mic is going to be a limited production throughout the years. Not quite as limited as say Gunter Wagner’s U 47 clone, which has a two year waiting list—but let’s just say there are only going to be so many to go around. So back to the sound. I went ahead and tracked a male vocal within the context of a song with a variety of LDC tube mics, including a Soundelux U95S, Manley Reference Cardioid, Pearlman TM-1, and Pearlman Church mic at 5am Studios in downtown Austin, TX. I would have liked to have had the original Church mic handy as well, but they are so rare it was impossible. The results of sonic tests confirmed what Dave had already told me. This mic is special. Without a doubt, the Pearlman Church mic track was the one that had the most finished and polished “album” sound, if you will, with a top end that sounded perfect. The Manley Reference is also a great mic with a top end that will show you every highlight—and every flaw—in the vocal. On this particular track, the Manley mic sounded far too sibilant and harsh. Therein lies the difference between a 100% accurate and open microphone capturing the good and the bad, and one that is simply perfect for voice and vocals. The Church mic is precisely that—a mic that can take a vocal and let it sit in the mix, with minimal fine tuning and most of the time alleviating many potential problems in the top end with harshness and sibilance. I also got to see the Pearlman Church mic put to the test on drums within a Glyn Johns mic setup during a session at 5am Studios. You can search Google to see this setup if you are not familiar with it—basically a four-mic configuration that, if you have the right player and room, can get you a better drum sound than with twenty mics on the kit. We used the Church mic for the floor tom / side mic in this setup, and it delivered a wallop! Great imaging on all the drums, and even using a different condenser (an older U 87) for the overhead mic in this setup, the Church mic blended in perfectly and in all honesty helped to deliver one of the best sounding drum sound setups we’ve heard at the studio, especially with only four mics! Reviews/(continues on page 62)
On acoustic guitar, the Pearlman Church mic also sounded excellent, delivering the warm full sound of a Collings body along with all the shimmer and detail in the high end. The Pearlman Church mic was even put to task on a roaring electric guitar cabinet, and in combination with a Royer, it helped to again put that great high end to work, adding interesting high-end detail that can be lost on the Royer. Is the Pearlman Church microphone a perfect microphone? From a technical perspective, no. One aspect of the Church mic I did find awry is that it wasn’t completely balanced in the bottom end vs. top end without adding some low-end EQ—say a bump around 200 Hz or so. Interestingly, after adding some low-end EQ on the bottom, the detail there was marvelous too. It’s like it was there all the time anyway, just not in perfect balance in volume and intensity with that pristine top end. So in some situations where you’d be looking to mic a source that required even balance throughout the frequency spectrum, you’ll definitely be reaching for some EQ. I found this true even on some vocals, but again, as soon it got a little bump on the bottom end, man, there it was, what a great sounding microphone! The Pearlman Church microphone can also be tuned to taste by trying some different tubes in the socket contained within. While I didn’t have a chance to try this, Dave informed me that I could also try a 6072, 12AY7, or 12AX7 to tune the mic to taste. Since Dave is a boutique builder, he is personally accessible to help you fine tune your mic to your specifications. Not many mic builders today will take the time to do so. The original Church mics were special and so is the Pearlman Church mic. For about half the price of any other U 47–style mic, it gets so close to that classic magical sound, especially on vocals, that I think Dave will have more orders than he can fill in the near future for his new/old Church mic. Dave also sent along his newest original creation—the TM-2 microphone. Priced at only $950, this mic resides in a smaller body than the Church mic or TM-1 and uses a 6AK5 glass pentode tube and a smaller 32 mm capsule. The shape of the basket is also changed, and this mic can fit into some places a larger condenser wouldn’t, especially on a drum kit. I think Dave has a winner with this mic as well. While it isn’t as full and rich as his flagship TM-1, or with the same magical top end as the Church mic, it does sound great on just about everything I tried it on. In front of an acoustic guitar, it gave our resident Schoeps a run for the money, and even on vocals it was very good at capturing enough detail to classify it as a potential vocal session mic choice. In summary, this new TM-2 in my opinion is designed to be a great all-around microphone for those on a budget. If I was limited in my mic choice, whether for budget reasons or in the studio or on a location gig, I would want to have at least one Pearlman TM-2 around as I could likely place it front of any source and get a good sounding track out of it. This mic will be a full-production microphone and not a limited special as is the Church mic. Having used Dave Pearlman’s microphone products in my studio for more than year, I can attest to their quality, durability, and again to Dave’s customer service. I’d encourage anyone shopping for condensers who doesn’t have $5K–$10K to spend on a vintage piece to check out Pearlman microphones for capturing that classic essence at incredible price points. (TM-1 $950 direct, TM-2 w/ American tube $1600, TM-2 w/ German tube $1750, Church $2500; www.pearlmanmicrophones.com) –Mark Warren, www.5amStudios.com
Gear Geeking w/ Andy… We have a few new contributors for this issue. Terry Setter (who contributed the MCA SP1 review) is not only on the faculty of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, but he also designed the TS-1 and TS-2 tube condenser mics for Chameleon Labs. Coincidentally, Mark Rubel, who reviewed the Setter-designed TS-1 for this issue (his second review for Tape Op) is also a faculty member; he teaches at Millikin University’s School of Music in Decatur, Illinois and is the owner and Chief Engineer of Pogo Studio. Barry Hufker (Telefunken USA RM-5C) is an associate professor of Audio Production at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri; and he heads up Hufker Recording. As far as I know, Mark Warren (Pearlman Church) isn’t a professor, but he owns a well-equipped studio in an enviable location—the South Congress Arts District—in the university town of Austin, TX. And speaking of Mark and his informative Pearlman Church review, I got a call from JB, who was “super stoked” after he read Mark’s review. It turns out that JB has an original and extremely-rare Church mic. He acquired it without knowing its history, and it was only through reading Mark’s well-researched article that JB realized what he’d been using (and loving) on just about every session since he got the mic. ••• I recently received an email from contributing writer Thom Monahan, who just got back from a recording session in Argentina with Juana Molina and Vetiver (on JB’s FW-1814 and PT M-Powered as reviewed in Tape Op # 49). With Thom’s penchant for recording music in interesting places, his cleanup tool of choice is the Wave Arts Master Restoration Suite. He had this to say about MR Hum: “Just magic. The kind of scary stuff that you thought all audio gear was like when you were a kid. While recording on the fly, in many differing environments project by project, its ability to clean up a wide spectrum of common electrical noise is just invaluable on a day-to-day basis. And it seems to suffer little of the frustrating comb-filter artifacts that plague other methods and products. An absolutely essential plug-in, MR Hum seems to leave the track nearly untouched. Grand slam home run.” I recently recorded an incredible jazz trio with master improviser Joe Morris (joe-morris.com) on upright bass. To make sure we captured all the subtleties of the performance, we mic’ed up Joe’s bass in the control room while drummer Luther “Trip” Gray (Tsunami, Ida, Glory Tellers) and saxophonist Jim Hobbs (Fully Celebrated Orchestra) played in the live room. Unfortunately, my IsoBox’s fan noise was just barely audible during the quietest passages. I remembered Thom’s email and fired up MR Noise—without reading the manual. Five minutes and 6 dB of noise reduction later, the bass sounded fantastic and the noise was no longer an issue. Our very own Garrett Haines is in the process of reviewing the whole suite. Also slated for a future issue is the continuation of the Wave Arts Power Suite 5 review. I can’t say enough about how efficient and easy-to-use (and fun too!) the plug-ins from Wave Arts are. ••• The most exciting addition to my studio rack in the past couple months is a Roland SRV-2000 reverb. I purchased it new back in the mid-’80s (for something like $600) and gave it to my brother for his home studio. It’s now back in my hands. I love its band-limited sound and the gritty-butwarm textures it can add to everything from snare drum to vocal. It sounds way better than the venerable Yamaha SPX90 (which I never really liked). Plus, any gear with secret, hidden modes (do a web search) has to be super cool!!! –AH
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Generator LLC KikBrik Bass drums are a strange thing. They are big and can be unruly, or worse yet, tiny-sounding if packed with a bunch of crap. They have a lot of interior space that is reflective and rounded. And they play a really important part of most music made involving a drum set. Enter the KikBrik, a truly “build a better mouse trap” invention. The KikBrik is a physical damper for the kick drum made from recycled materials and shaped roughly like a large brick that’s had its edges beveled and its ends slanted. Its crosssection is about 6’’ x 6’’ square, and it comes in three standard lengths for drums that are 14’’, 16’’, and 18’’ deep. Custom lengths can also be ordered. I had a long talk with John Calder, the inventor of the KikBrik; not only is he a life-long drummer and studio owner, but he’s also designed studios and electronics. It’s clear that the KikBrik is a result of a lot of creative thinking as well as real acoustical principles. The multifaceted bevels on each end (which are shaped differently) allow you to place the KikBrik inside the drum and vary the location and pressure of the contact points on the heads. You can position the KikBrik so it’s touching one head or the other; both heads; or touching neither (which still provides acoustic damping inside the shell). I got to use the KikBrik in a number of situations with a few different drums. It spent the most time in my 22’’ Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute. The day it arrived, I put it inside and just played for a while, changing positions every few minutes. Some changes, like moving the contact point higher or lower, were more subtle, while the angled positions affecting one head were more obvious. What’s nice is that it’s simple to make changes—just reach in and move the KikBrik. The first recording session it saw was for a cover band (All You Can Eat) whose bass drum had a head with a muffling ring and a lot of pillows inside. It was dead and lifeless. We took out the pillows and put in the KikBrik, and the drum really opened up. I believe it ended up at an angle touching the resonant head just a bit. The band was a trio, so a little bloom in the bass drum was a good thing. I did a live in-room-rehearsal recording with one of my bands (The Redgraves) without a lot of prep. The KikBrik was in the 22” and touching both heads. The recording sounds great— plenty of thud with very sculpt-able attack. A really interesting instrumental bass and drums duo (Benelli) was in, and with them came a 16’’ x 26” Gretsch Catalina bass drum. We put the KikBrik in and tuned the drum, and it’s one of the coolest bass drum tones I’ve ever recorded. Due to its size, the drum could have easily taken over the mix, and the attack was at a much lower frequency than most of what we hear in the rock arena. The KikBrik kept the drum from getting away from me and made sure that the attack didn’t get lost. The resultant sound took well to EQ and compression and was never a fight like the recordings of big drums tend to be. I’m playing in two bands right now: one on drums (Wiplot), the other on bass (The Redgraves). I’ve been able to use the KikBrik from both sides of the glass and both sides of the drum. It’s a super-useful, easy to use, and well-made product. I think it’s a bargain, and I know I’ll be using mine for many years to come. ($49 for standard size, $58 for custom; www.kikbrik.com) –Tony SanFilippo
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MCA SP1 large-diaphragm condenser mic You knew it. You knew that with all the microphones on the market, there had to be at least one cheapo Chinese mic that stands head and shoulders above the rest. You were right! Interestingly, this mic is so overlooked that it is slated to be discontinued, although you can still find them for sale. The mic is called an MCA SP1, and it lists for $60, but you can find it for $40 if you shop around. Strange but true, the price is probably the biggest reason that the SP1 has been so completely overlooked. People think, “Hey, I’m not going to buy that cheap junk. I’m going to cough up the extra $20 and get a good mic.” Well, the parent company of MCA is Marshall Electronics (who also have the MXL line of mics), so it does have a reasonable pedigree, and it comes with a three-year guarantee. The mic ships with a mic clip in a bare bones package—no box, shock mount, or even a bag. In fact, it comes in a blister pack, like batteries or a new pair of scissors. The SP1 is a large-diaphragm, cardioid, FET condenser mic that requires phantom power. Yes, it looks like all the other Chinese mics of this description, but that is where the similarities end. It has a sound that is in a class by itself. Why? Because in this particular mic, they happened to join an exceptional capsule with an exceptional circuit. The capsule features a 20 mm diaphragm; that’s not really “large” by my definition. It’s closer to medium, in my opinion. The diaphragm sits inside a larger ring of thin metal, which makes it appear to be the size of a typical large diaphragm capsule. The ring probably has some sonic effect, at least on the polar pattern (which is quite tight) and the low-frequency response. The smaller size of the diaphragm is probably the reason that the midrange of this microphone is so incredibly smooth (think ribbon), yet it has the high and low–end extension of a condenser. The electronics are modeled on the highly respected Schoeps “long tailed pair”; a proven design that is the essence of simplicity and functionality (steal from the best…). If you’re nervous about quality, you can buy one and have it customized by Jim Williams of Audio Upgrades (www.audioupgrades.com). For $125, he replaces the critical circuit components with select, boutique parts and modifies the DC-DC converter to increase the polarizing voltage. These changes yield higher output, extended low-frequency response, and greater overall reliability. But try this mic before you go the extra mile. It sounds so good that you might decide you’d rather buy three more than pay to have one hot-rodded. But beware; don’t buy an SP2! You won’t be happy. ($69.95 MSRP; www.mcamics.com) –Terry Setter
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Beyerdynamic M 160 & M 130 ribbon mics Does the Beyer M 160 even need a review? Surely everyone knows by now that this is the mic Andy Johns used to record John Bonham’s drums on “When The Levee Breaks”. Does anything else need be said? I rather doubt, it but I will prattle on for a bit anyway. It’s a ribbon mic, but unlike most ribbons, which are figure-8, the M 160 has a hypercardioid pattern. I bought one about two years ago, and it wasn’t long before it was seeing a lot of use on most everything you can think of. I first tried it as an overhead, and while loads of people seem to love it in that application, for me the frequency response combined with the relatively narrow pickup pattern resulted in a sound that was cool but just too “colored”. (Yeah I know, that word is about as abused and meaningless as both “warm” and “punchy”. Shoot me.) However, as a front of kit mic it has worked wonders. I put it up about snare height a foot in front of the kit and bam—perfect. Adds some nice space to the snare and some high-end smack to the kick—two things I always seem to want more of as the mix starts to get busy. So I like it a lot there, and I’ve also had nice results with it on the side of the snare and on the rack tom. But guitar amps are where I really like it... Shortly after getting the M 160 I got on a real multimic’ing kick for guitars. I felt like experimenting and would often throw up three or four mics—a couple up close, one a ways back, one really far away, maybe the bullet mic up close—whatever. I tried all sorts of stupid stuff. Eventually I got around to mixing all these songs. And a funny thing kept happening. I’d go through the guitar tracks, try various combinations and balances, different panning schemes, etc, and almost every time, I ended up going with just the M 160, turned up loud. It just sounds right. My fave guitar mic before I got the Beyer was a Sennheiser MD 409, and I would often pair the two of them up close (well, a foot away or so) on an amp. Comparing the two was interesting. The main difference to me was really one of texture; the Beyer was just so much smoother in the midrange. I just found that, even with some pretty heroically distorted and nasty guitar sounds, the M 160 remained entirely pleasant to listen to; it never seemed to be the least bit peaky or jagged. Anyway, it wasn’t long before I abandoned the whole multi-mic scheme, and basically the M 160 became the only mic I used on a guitar amp for the better part of a year. I liked it on a bunch of other things as well: viola, violin, upright bass, tambourine, and other percussive things. I think it made the cut on some bass amps and vocals as well. It’s hard not to like this mic. I don’t have anything bad to say. If you’re one of those who defaults to an SM57 on guitar amps, you reeeeeally ought to try the M 160 out and see if you don’t find it a whole lot nicer. You can find it for dramatically less than MSRP without much trouble. –Scott Craggs Yeah, what Scott said! I love the M 160. The first time I used one was several years ago at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco. I think it was house engineer Aaron Prellwitz who suggested that I give it a go on the horns. My first thought was, “Am I going to blow out the ribbon by putting it in front of the trumpet?” He assured me it’d be no problem. It worked out great, and the
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track sounded supersmooth and sat perfectly in the mix; it had just the right kind of midrange presence to stay out of the way of the vocal. I also tried an M 160 pair on cello and violin as medium-distance mics (in conjunction with some close mics), and the sound was perfectly dreamy—neither scratchy nor squeaky, but not too dark either. At one point, while tracking a French horn with an M 160, the player’s boyfriend, who was in the live room giving encouragement, put his mouth right up to the mic and pretty much blew up the whole signal chain by popping into it—not a funny joke at all. I told Aaron about it when we were packing up and asked him to tell John to send me a bill for the mic if it proved later to be damaged, but I never got a bill. I later shared this story with a representative from Beyerdynamic, who then pulled out a sheet of paper and proceeded to fold it. That’s when I learned that each of the M 160’s two ribbons has multiple folds across two axes that prevent it from stretching or collapsing like standard ribbons with accordion-like corrugations will do under air pressure. Neat! Well, long story short, I recently purchased an M 160 for myself, and I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. Compared to my other ribbon mics (Royer R-121, SF-12; SE Electronics R-1), the M 160 has less high-end and exhibits a healthy (or portly, depending on how you hear it) low and lower-midrange boost at close proximity, but that’s part of what makes it special. The hypercardioid M 160 is really unique in its ability to pick up lots of midrange smoothly while picking up minimal room sound, even when it’s positioned more than a few inches from the source. The mic’s response dips slightly within the most crowded bit of the spectrum between 300 to 800 Hz but rises with upper-mid/low-treble presence between 2 to 6 kHz, which for me, makes for easier mixing. Because of these traits, I wouldn’t recommend the M 160 as a do-everything mic or as a primary vocal mic; instead, I’d call it the perfect complement to the do-everything and vocal mics that you already own. –AH If you read my take on the M 160 in the first third of this review, you know that I Am A Fan. So when Andy asked if I wanted to review the M 130, I was at his studio’s door before he finished the question. Pulled it out of the box to have a look, and oh, what a cute little mic. Yeah, I sound like Mom, but it really is kind of adorable looking. Cosmetics aside, there’s a lot of other things to like about this mic. First thing I did was put up the hypercardioid M 160 and the figure-8 M 130 in M/S configuration in front of the drum kit. Worked a treat. I’d already come to lean on the M 160 there as my new secret weapon for drums, and the addition of the M 130 lent a whole new dimension to the sound. Then I tried it on some guitars. Zowie—sounds great. It has the same sort of smoothness the M 160 does, but with its own unique character. It has this cool “hi-fi” thing going on. It doesn’t sound “scooped”, but the lower mids are definitely “relaxed”, shall we say. A look at the frequencyresponse chart confirmed what I was hearing; the response seems to shelve a bit at 500 Hz, and then again around 250 Hz, coming up again with a bump around 80 Hz. The high end starts rolling off around 10 kHz. In practice, this amounts to a really nice presence boost. Actually, I’m listening to the new Shellac record as I type this, and you know how Bob Weston’s bass sounds? The M 130 has some of that about it. That’s really the best way I can describe it. Again, it doesn’t sound scooped in an artificial way, it’s just very clear and lively sounding. I may well come to like it even more than the M 160 on guitars, and that’s saying something. I certainly liked the M 130 better than the M 160 as an overhead, the understated mids were more flattering to my
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inept meanderings around the kit. Neither mic was exactly what I was looking for from an overhead, but they’re both definitely a sound, and I can imagine a lot of folks being psyched with either of them. I also put the M 130 up against a Shure SM7 on bass cab, and I really liked the way the M 130 captured more of a sense of space. Listening to the SM7, I thought, “That sounds like bass.” With the M 130, “That sounds like a bass amp in a room.” I also tried it as a distant room mic, maybe 15–20 ft from my drums, and I was surprised how much I liked it. Usually when I have mics that far back, I always hate them on playback, as the somewhat wonky sound of my live room becomes way too apparent, but the M 130 was oddly pleasant. Nice. I haven’t had a chance to check it out on anything else yet, unless you count cowbell (sounded great!), but I have a feeling it’s going to see a lot of use. Its MSRP is almost the same as the M 160’s, so I imagine the street price is similarly less. Check these mics out. I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed by either of them. (M 160 $759 MSRP; M 130 $749; www.beyerdynamic.com) –Scott Craggs
Malekko B:Assmaster distortion pedal Distortion aficionados, take note—Malekko has served up the indie-stompbox scene with a doozie. The B:Assmaster is a contemporary tribute to the exquisitely rare Maestro Bass Brassmaster, a ‘70s-era pedal that was intended to impart trumpet-like tones onto electric guitar or bass. In truth, the original Maestro was a unique device capable of an absurd range of tonal variation, with the then-unheardof feature of allowing the user to dial-in any amount of clean signal. These are so sought after, vintage units have recently been changing hands for well over a thousand bucks. Seeing the demand for a modern version, the Malekko folks put on their thinking caps and came up with the B:Assmaster. It delivers the goods in spades. With just three knobs and two switches (besides the true-bypass footswitch), this box really does give up a huge palette of sounds just like its ancestor. The Ass Volume knob and Ass switch (for real) control the level and tone of distortion. The Bass Volume knob adjusts the level of dry signal to be mixed in. I found the sound of the dry signal was not quite the same as the bypassed signal; it’s a bit more compressed and harmonically rich, but in a great way. This feature helps make the B:Assmaster quite possibly the ultimate bass distortion device. The Harm switch and Sensitivity knob adjust the harmonic shape and depth of distortion. Hard to explain, but those two controls seem to have the biggest range of tone. The Sensitivity knob, in particular, sometimes acts like an expander/gate and other times seems like a high-pass filter. The cool thing is that almost all of the sounds that can be conjured up are musically meaningful; it’s hard to find a setting that yields chaotic, uncontrolled, atonal sounds. Bonus points for a very hip orange, purple, and brown design, with a secret hidden LED for when the unit is activated! Extra bonus points—the people at Malekko have a toothy sense of humor. I don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone, but let’s just say that when I unscrewed the bottom panel to install a 9 V battery, I was greeted with a bitingly funny revelation. ($255 direct; www.malekkoheavyindustry.com) –Pete Weiss, www.weissy.com
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Samson Audio CL2 Pencil Condenser Mic VR88 Velocity Ribbon Mic Here’s a couple of new and very affordable mics from Samson. First up, the CL2s are sold as a matched pair of small-diaphragm pencil-style condensers with high-pass filters and 10 dB pads. The mics come very handsomely packaged in a tough little aluminum case that holds the two mics, plus just about every mic accessory you’d ever need: two standard mic clips, two well-built shockmounts, pop filters, windscreens, even a stereo bar! You also get cardioid and omni capsules for both. I’ve used these as one might expect—stereo drum overheads, acoustic guitar, upright piano, percussion, etc.—and they have been solid on every source. I was particularly stoked on the X/Y drum application of these mics; I ended up with a surprising amount of detail, range, and really nice “air” from the cymbals. The CL2s did not disappoint when used as a cello mic in conjunction with a UA 610 preamp. A single CL2 with no filtering, placed about 3 ft away, kinda between the bridge and f-hole, returned a perfectly natural, resonant tone. Hey, I even used the CL2s to mic up a play at my son’s school, and I can say with confidence that the second and third–graders never sounded better. The parents all started using descriptives like “punchy” and “warm”. (They usually ask me to make their kids sound like The Beatles—weird, huh?) Anyway, great little mics; a steal at $299 for the set. The VR88 is one of a number of new ribbons that have cropped up lately, and while it won’t be replacing my trusty Royer, it definitely has its own character and is a flexible and durable “entry-level” ribbon. I use the term entry-level without any condescension, but only to illustrate how easy it is to screw up a ribbon mic, either by accident or blatant abuse. The VR88 is actually pretty tough and can withstand higher SPLs than most ribbons; I used this thing on a rock kick drum, and it weathered the beating admirably, and it sounded great! I would never subject my tender Royer to that kind of brutality. It’s also phantom-powered (no more “did I just blow the ribbon again?”) so you don’t need a high-gain preamp. It comes with a massive spider-style shockmount, so it’s a bit of a thug, really. Furthering its thuggish profile is the industrial design of the VR88, which is somewhere between that of a flattened RCA 77A and R2D2’s mug shot. Like the CL2s, it has its own tough aluminum case, plus a cheapish-looking right-angle XLR cable (didn’t trust the cable, but that’s probably just my long-standing cable snobbery). For rock music, I really liked it on kick drum and bass amp; it seemed to consistently return an articulate and “tight” low end. I also noted exceptional results with it in front of an upright acoustic bass placed 3 ft from the bridge. Conversely, I didn’t care for it as a vocal mic at all, as I found it a shade too dullsounding and lacking in clarity. This may, however, be a result of a pronounced proximity effect, as I tend to record vocals up close, usually at distances of less than 10’’ away from the mic. If you are looking for a percussive or woody sound for acoustic guitars, the VR88 could work well here too; on the other hand, I generally prefer a brighter acoustic tone. If you’re ribbon-curious, on a budget, and are into the droid look, pick one up. (CL2 pair $299 MSRP, VR88 $499; www.samsontech.com) –Dana Gumbiner, www.stationtostationrecording.com
A great tracking room in Northern California open to freelance engineers and studio-savvy musicians. 2 inch 16 & 24 track, Pro Tools HD, $250/day Huge recording room w/ 30 ft. ceilings and lots of isolation areas. MCI two inch recorder, Pro Tools HD3, Apogee Rosetta 800’s, Lucid clock, Neve 34128 16 by 4 console Daking 16 by 8 console Preamps/dynamics: Millenia Media (5), Neve 1272 (2) & 1073 EQ, Avalon 737, UA 2192, 2-610, 2108, 2176 & LA-2A/3A, Drawmer 1969/S3, DBX 166, Helios, Focusrite ISA 220 & Red EQ, Pultec EQH-2, Chandler TG’s (EMI), Thermionic Phoenix, Telefunken V72 (2), Altec 438C & 1567, Meek VC1&6Q, Distressor (2), Quad-8 EQs, Great River EQ2NV, Fairchild 663, SE C2, Mercury M66, Sta-Level, Gates SA-39, Summit MPC-100A, EQP-200B & TLA 50. Mics: Neumann U67 & CMV 563’s, Elam 251, RCA 77 & 74, AKG 414’s, Shure KSM-32, SM-7/58/57’s, Sennheiser 421’s & 409’s, Coles, Wunder C-12/U-47, Blue Mouse/ Blueberry, Royer R121’s/SF-12, more. Lots of album credits. Lots of studio instruments.
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M-Audio NRV10 mixer/interface When I first saw the NRV10 at the NAMM show in January, I said out loud, “Duh! Why didn’t anyone else think of doing this?” The sucker is an analog mixer and multichannel audio interface in one. It makes a ton of sense! Well, I finally got one, and you know what, the pocket-protector geeks at M-Audio outgeeked me and made it even more useful than I originally thought it would be. Sure, you can use it as a regular 8x2 analog mixer. It’s got six input faders. Faders 1-4 can be switched between mic or line inputs. (You can keep both the XLR mic and TRS line inputs plugged in at the same time—no unpatching necessary.) Phantom power for the mics can be turned on or off globally. And the line inputs have more than enough gain to be used as instrument DIs. Fader 5/6 is selectable between a mono mic input and a stereo line input. Fader 7/8 is a stereo line input. Each fader has a three-band EQ, a prefader Aux 1 send, and a postfader Aux 2 send. Aux 2 simultaneously feeds the Aux 2 output and the DFX, a built-in digital effects unit. And each fader can be assigned to either the Mix bus or the Cue bus. The Cue bus is exclusive of the Mix bus—perfect for DJs or performers who need a foolproof way to audition records or samples while the Mix bus is feeding the house sound. Additionally, the first four faders have analog inserts. The master section has faders for Phones and Ctrl Room output levels, and there are two stereo returns. The DFX has two knobs allowing you to select a preset from sixteen programs and sixteen variations of each program. All in all, the NRV10 is very straightforward and well laid-out. But things really get interesting when you plug this mixer into the FireWire port of your computer. As a FireWire audio interface, you get ten channels in and ten channels out, at up to 24-bit, 96 kHz resolution— these channels are labeled FW 1-10. FW 1-8 are set up like tape sends/returns (let’s call them DAW sends/returns) on Faders 1-7/8 (remember, Faders 5/6 and 7/8 are stereo). FW 9/10 are sent to the DAW from the Mix bus, and they return to the NRV10 through two knobs that you can use to blend FW 9/10 into Ctrl Room and Phones independently. What does this all mean? Well, let’s talk workflow now. After reading the well-written manual, as my first test of the system, I connected the NRV10 to my Sony handheld micro PC (Tape Op #57) running Pro Tools MPowered. Then I fed it eight tracks from another computer, as if I were recording basics for a whole band. Four tracks for drums landed on Faders 5/6 and 7/8 via the line inputs. (In a real tracking situation, I would have used external preamps to feed these two faders.) Scratch vocal, two guitars, and a bass went into Faders 1-4. (And in a real session, these would have come through the built-in mic inputs.) Then I used the DAW sends on FW 1-8 like direct outs to the DAW, and I recorded eight individual tracks into Pro Tools. I created two headphone feeds for my pretend band: one using prefader Aux 1; and a second using the NRV10’s Mix bus inserts (this is a cheat), which I fed to a Samson Q5 headphone amp (Tape Op #29). Both of these headphone feeds were generated pre–A/D converter; therefore, they had zero latency. To monitor the actual recorded signals, I created a mix in Pro Tools and
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brought it back on FW 9/10 so it was the only source to Ctrl Room (because of the previously mentioned cheat). This post-DAW mix, of course, exhibited converter and buffer–induced latency, making it suitable only for me, the engineer, to monitor, and not for my pretend band. I was psyched that I could get two different zero-latency feeds going with the Mix bus inserts and Aux 1, but I really wish the NRV10 had two independently-assignable headphone outputs—one for the engineer and one for the performers, or in some cases, both for the performers. Now it was time for overdubs, so I pulled out some real mics to record myself. Within Pro Tools, I submixed the basic tracks and returned them as stems to the NRV10 via FW 3-10 onto Faders 3-7/8 and assigned FW 9/10 to Phones. Then I used Faders 1 and 2 for recording new tracks, feeding them to the DAW via FW 1/2. The headphone mix came from prefader Aux 1. And I used the DFX to add reverb to the headphone mix without the reverb getting into the tracks being recorded. Cool! Can I tell you that I absolutely hate creating headphone mixes in software with on-screen faders and aux sends? Creating a headphone mix on an actual mixer is so much easier—just grab knobs and turn them! And just as in recording basics with the NRV10, channels that are currently being recorded as overdubs can be monitored with zero latency. I should emphasize at this point that you can do all this with a separate mixer and interface, but the NRV10 is so well integrated that you don’t have to repatch anything as you go between tracking, overdubbing, and mixing. And speaking of mixing, all I had to do was return eight channels of stems from Pro Tools to Faders 1-7/8 via FW 1-8, and I had real EQs as well as effects loops. Oh, and the Mix bus insert was handy for slapping on a stereo compressor. Unfortunately, the analog inserts on the Faders can’t be switched to post-DAC (they only work on pre-DAC signals), so they can’t be used during mixdown. Too bad, because it would’ve been nice to use a bus compressor on the drum submix. Also too bad that the DAW returns on FW 1-8 are always pre-EQ, because you can switch the DAW sends to post-EQ—watch out for feedback! Personally, I think this is a design omission; the switch for the DAW sends/returns should instead move both the sends and the returns pre or post–EQ, not just the sends. Furthermore, the 45 mm linear faders are so short and sticky that you can’t really mix with them—you have to “set and forget” them. Smooth 60 mm faders (like on Mackie compact mixers) would have been more useful. Or if M-Audio really wanted to save space, I think rotary knobs would have been better than the 45 mm faders. There are lots of useful LEDs, including peak indicators for Faders 1-7/8 and the DFX, as well as status lights for phantom power and FireWire. A Kensington lock port is on the back so the mixer won’t grow legs. Unfortunately, there’s no word clock input, and I wish inputs 5/6 and 7/8 were switchable to RIAA curve for use with turntables. But considering that M-Audio really thought through various workflows to make the NRV10 as flexible as it is, my various complaints read more like a wish list for a future release. My guess is that there will soon be copycats of the NRV10 coming our way. Like I said, I can’t believe no one else has done anything like this before. ($899.95 MSRP; www.m-audio.com) –AH
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Tannoy Ellipse 8 iDP studio monitor TS212 iDP subwoofer I love the Bag End M-6 Time-Align monitors (Tape Op #50) that I have in my living room for their accurate imaging; these were my first long-term experience with coaxial drivers featuring a tweeter mounted within the center of the woofer. So I was excited to demo Tannoy’s top-of-the-line Ellipse powered monitors, which use the British company’s trademarked Dual Concentric technology. The original coaxial speaker was the Altec Duplex, first available as a 12’’ version in 1941 followed soon thereafter by a 15’’ version in 1943. The latter is commonly known as the “604”—probably the most popular soffit-mounted studio speaker of all time. The Duplex featured a conventional horn tweeter with its compression driver mounted within the center of the woofer’s magnet structure, and the outer flare of the horn in front of the woofer cone. Tannoy’s first Dual Concentric, released in 1947, improved upon the coaxial principal by utilizing a specially-shaped (and expensive) 15’’ woofer cone that served as the outer flare of the horn tweeter. With this design change, not only was the whole woofer cone unobstructed, but the wider horn aperture meant a lower cut-off frequency for the tweeter. The crossover was set one octave above this natural cut-off, reducing distortion significantly. The biggest problem with Tannoy’s original design was interaction between the woofer and the tweeter; as the woofer moved in and out, the shape of the outer horn was effectively changing, affecting the output of the tweeter. Modern Tannoy Dual Concentric speakers are unique in that they employ a precisely-shaped Tulip Waveguide for the tweeter within the woofer, and the molded polypropylene woofer is now shaped to stay out of the tweeter’s way. The result? Time-aligned, point-source imaging with very little interaction between the two drivers and consistent dispersion throughout the whole frequency spectrum. The pair of Ellipse 8 iDP monitors and a matching TS212 iDP subwoofer that Tannoy sent me arrived on a shipping pallet. Unpacking these heavyweights was quite a chore. Tannoy could take a cue from companies like Panasonic and Sony, who offer sturdy, multilayer, reusable boxes that disassemble around the product, leaving the unpacked product unencumbered and easy to lift. Even with two long-armed people, it was impossible to lift the subwoofer out of the box. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the option of cutting apart the box, so we had to tip the box over, which meant the subwoofer would be sliding out on one of its fabric covers. (The speaker has fabric covers on three sides, while the uncovered rear side has protruding heat fins.) Notwithstanding a sub-par box, Tannoy could have designed the internal foam packing so that speaker and packaging could be slid out together without fear of damage. While not quite as difficult to unpack, the Ellipse monitor, because of its rounded form, required dry hands and extra care. Plus, I was tempted to use the top-mounted SuperTweeter pod as a handhold, but a big-lettered warning strategically placed inside the box warned me against it. Once unpacked, I found the system easy—and quite fun—for a geek like me to set up. The iDP in each moniker refers to Interactive Digital Programming. In a multi-speaker configuration, one monitor is the master and sends digital audio and control information to all the other monitors via
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CAT5 cables. (The master has both analog and digital audio inputs while the slaves have only CAT5 connectors. Highquality shielded CAT5 cables are included.) The manual has very clear diagrams and describes in detail how to configure iDP systems from 2.1 all the way up to 7.1, with up to three subwoofers. (A common misconception is that the .1 refers to the number of subwoofers when it actually corresponds to the LFE channel, which is a whole different channel of information much like L is different than R in a stereo signal. With bass management enabled in a three-sub system, the center sub would output the LFE channel together with the center channel’s low-frequency content, while the left and right subs would handle the lowfrequency content of the left and right channels.) Once I’d finished interconnecting the Ellipse 8 iDP monitors and the TS212 iDP subwoofer, I used the sidemounted control panel on the master 8 iDP to align the system. Although the panel is limited to a two-line LCD display and four buttons, I had no problem navigating the hierarchical menu system. I especially liked the fact that all tweakable parameters throughout the hierarchy are highlighted with an asterisk; simple consistencies like this really do make for a better user-experience. From the master panel, I turned on the built-in pink-noise generator and proceeded to take measurements with my Terrasonde ATB-1. Long story short, I didn’t have to employ any of the Ellipse’s filters because the response was very flat out-of-the-box in my carefully-treated control room, but I did spend a number of days trying out different settings. All filtering (including the primary crossover) is done digitally (except for the SuperTweeter’s crossover, which is passive and postamplification). I found that both the high and low filters sound quite smooth, and their slope seems to vary as you increase or decrease energy; maximum change is 6 dB up or down. Keep in mind that the filters are not there to fix extreme anomalies in your room’s acoustics, and without the optional PC-iP installer software, there are no sharp filters to get you in trouble. Predefined scenes are available for situations like “Console”, “Wall”, “Corner”, etc.; but there’s no explanation of how these change the filters. Presets allow you to store up to fifteen setups; saved parameters include filter and relative-level settings, as well as bass management, mute status, and X-Curve. The latter refers to an ANSI/SMTPE specification for mixing in a small room. Also, seventeen factory presets are included. I’m glad that I had my hearing protectors on when I employed the pinknoise generator for the first time—very loud at its default setting. Turning it down was more difficult than it had to be because you have to navigate to a different area of the menu structure to change level; a level control should be placed right next to on/off. And without either the optional hardware or software remote, it’s laborious to make changes using the speaker’s side-mounted control panel, especially if there’s a recording console in the way between your listening position and the speaker! Also, effective subwoofer placement requires moving the subwoofer around to find its optimal spot. Unlike handle-equipped Genelec subs, which are obviously designed for professional environments, the Tannoy is meant to look pretty—in a contemporary furniture kind of way—so it’s almost as hard to move as it is to unpack; there’s nothing to grab hold of. The TS212 iDP does have both a polarity switch and a variable phase control, alleviating some of the pain of placing it. To phase-align the subwoofer to the main
Reviews/(continues on page 72)
monitors, you can flip the sub’s polarity (knowing that the digital signal feeding it can’t be accidentally polarityreversed), then vary the phase until you get full cancellation of the crossover frequency at the listening position, then flip the polarity back to normal. Once set up, I spent months listening to and using these speakers, and I was quite impressed. Fantastic imaging, and exceptionally smooth across the whole spectrum! In fact, the first time I sat down for an extended time in front of these speakers, I was a bit confused because there seemed to be a bit of “scooping” going on—maybe a dip in the upper mids or lower highs? But a second set of measurements with my audio analyzer confirmed that the response was flat at mix position—very close to the response I was getting with my ADAM S3-As in the mids and highs. But over time, I realized that what I initially perceived as a loss of energy was actually a function of the Dual Concentric system exhibiting very little distortion and inter-driver interference in the crossover region, with its near-perfect alignment of the drivers. If you haven’t spent some time with a modern Tannoy Dual Concentric monitor, I think you’ll also be amazed that the crossover is no longer discernable the first time you give it a good long listen— especially if you listen to anything with well-recorded vocals. Also, I was at first doubting of the SuperTweeter because you can’t really hear it by itself when you’re sitting behind the console. I wish that there were a way to turn it on/off remotely—as this kind of A/B’ing might make the benefits clearer. Switching between 96 kHz and 44.1 kHz mixes of the same song, I felt that I could hear the interaction between certain tracks at 96 kHz—especially ride-cymbal bleed—better with the Tannoys than with my ADAMs. But honestly, I can’t tell you if this was a result of the SuperTweeter or the Dual Concentric design—or both. In any case, it’s clear that the system as a whole works extremely well. I should note that I tried both the analog and digital inputs to the master Ellipse 8 iDP. Obviously, there’s an A-D converter inside since all the processing and distribution is in the digital domain. I started with the analog inputs, and of course, the benefits of Dual Concentric made for a great listening experience. Next I tried the digital output of my DMX-R100 console, and the soundstage actually collapsed a bit! But I’ll conjecture that the DMX-R100’s digital outs suffer from a poorly-shaped signal just like its WC output does (as noted in my review of the Drawmer M-Clock in Tape Op #51). I then tried locking the 8 iDP to its WC input (using the M-Clock that was also clocking the console). Woah! Huge difference! And that’s what I stuck with. These are definitely the smoothest-sounding speakers I’ve had in my studio, especially in the upper mids, in and near the crossover region. Plus, the subwoofer’s variable phase control and 4th-order low-pass filter made certain that the transition to the sub was also seamless. Everything about the iDP monitors and subwoofer—even down to the well-written setup guides in the manual—make for an extremely coherent system, and the result is extremely coherent tonality and imaging. These speakers even prompted me to pull out my Rega turntable and listen to some old vinyl (via my Apogee AD-16X at 96 kHz), and wow, what a soundstage. (Ellipse 8 iDP Master $2500 MSRP, Slave $2200; TS212 iDP $3095; www.tannoy.com) –AH
Tannoy Reveal 6D active nearfields When Andy first asked me to take a listen to the new Tannoy Reveal 6D studio monitors, I was eager to hear what improvements had been made from its predecessor the Reveal Active, a speaker that I wasn’t too impressed with but with which I was already familiar. After working with the Tannoy Reveal 6D for about two months, I can say that it does sound better. The most useful and impressive improvement is the ability to tune your monitors to the room. Having recently tested JBL’s room-tuning system, I was a bit wary about the reliability and feasibility of any speaker properly tuning itself to an environment. However, I found that Tannoy’s system was not only more straightforward, but left me with more information about the acoustics of the room. Using the included Activ Assist software, I was able to plug in the microphone and cables (included) to a laptop, and within seconds, get a bandwidth reading on what the speaker was outputting. The software was then able to interpret and make correction recommendations from a selection of over 2000 possibilities. Making the adjustments required setting the two banks of DIP switches on the rear of each speaker to what the software suggested. The first bank of ten DIP switches controls low-frequency alignment, mid/near/close–field, and half/quarter and eighth–space compensation, while the second bank controls mid-band and high-frequency shelving trim. Once I was properly calibrated to the room, I found my mixes came out sounding honest and the way they were intended to sound—which I rate as a huge success for a speaker. If I had nitpick, I found the high mids to be a bit brittle for my taste, leaving a mix sounding slightly less shimmery if I wasn’t careful to push the top end slightly more than I was used to. (I’ve worked extensively with Dynaudio BM15A monitors, and I found them to have more warmth and definition than the Tannoys, but these are much bigger speakers (with a 10’’ woofer) that cost over twice as much.) Overall, I noticed a much fuller and richer sound from the Reveal 6D compared to Tannoy’s previous models. But like most gear decisions, it comes down to preference. ($629 MSRP each; www.tannoy.com) –Josh Peck
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Dangerous Music
SE Electronics
Monitor ST
R-1 ribbon mic
Probably more than ever, recording studios have seen a need for monitoring different inputs and routing these signals to a variety of speakers. In my studio, we monitor the DAW, console LR, console control room out, CD, iPod, and computer outputs. We listen through three different speaker/amp combos plus a subwoofer. Our old Allen & Heath console from the ‘80s is fine but only allows for two speaker selects and two stereo inputs. Routing had become tedious, and after looking at all the capacitors and crap in the signal path, I was starting to guess that I wasn’t hearing all the music. When Dangerous unveiled the Monitor ST, I knew it was what I was looking for. There’s a 1RUheight main unit with two DB-25 connectors on the rear for I/O, and a pair of XLR jacks for the Aux Input. On the front is a talkback mic, along with jacks for a remote talkback mic and headphones, as well as level knobs for headphones, talkback, main out to the cue outputs, aux input to cue, aux to main, and Input 4 (great for the CD player). The remote, which communicates with the main unit via CAT5 cable, is a handsome, aluminum, bridge-shaped block that can sit well on a console or desktop. The switches—and in particular the main volume knob—send info to the rack unit where routing and gain is adjusted via microprocessor-controlled relays—real step attenuation instead of cheap VCAs. You can hear the relays in the main unit physically click as you adjust volume (which seemed odd at first, but now it’s a familiar audible cue for me when I’m changing levels). Backlit pushbuttons allow for speaker and input selection, speaker muting, talkback, mono collapse, dim, and programming. Programming allows for adjusting level of the inputs and speaker outputs, compensating for –10 dBV consumer gear, and even changing the mute dim mode. The ST is a dream. With the ability to route four sources to three speaker outputs, plus control the sub, it allows us to easily jump between monitors and input sources for referencing mixes, moving between the console and Pro Tools, and such. From the minute we had it wired up and turned on, it felt natural and easy to use. After a little P-touch labeling, freelance engineers jumped right into using the ST without any questions. Audio quality is clearer than our console ever let us hear before. Being able to drag the remote around the listening area instead of being chained to the console allowed better ergonomic setups and less weird arm stretching. The talkback (as well as the other buttons too) features a unique operation: hold the button down and talk (like on most consoles), and the TB unlatches when done; tap the button, and the TB stays latched while you talk and edit tracks at the same time; hit it again to unlatch. Perfect. The Slate output on the rear of the main unit can be brought out to the patchbay and then sent to headphones (in our case, the Furman HDS-16 system reviewed in Tape Op #55) so that the players can hear you through the talkback. There’s a jack for a secondary remote TB, so we built a little pushbutton/XLR switch; now we can use regular mic cables to put the remote TB switch as far from the console as needed. (Note that this remote TB jack doesn’t dim the monitors.) There’s even an input for a remote TB mic, handy if the main unit is not racked nearby. [Unfortunately, the jack for the remote mic is on the front while the jack for the remote switch is on the back! Kludgy wiring if you want to connect a purpose-built TB mic with a built-in switch. –AH] The ST can be combined with the SR expansion (another 1RUheight device) so that surround speakers and inputs can be controlled in the same way, and calibrated accurately as well. Not bad for only $1499 MSRP for the SR. Got more than one set of speakers? Want the assurance that your sources are getting to the speakers uncolored by your console? Got a few different sources to compare at mixdown? For its quality, features and thoughtful design, the ST can’t be beat, and I’m having a hard time remembering how I got by without it. ($2,199 MSRP; www.dangerousmusic.com) –LC
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My guess is that a lot of people considering the purchase of the SE R-1 will wonder how it compares to the Royer R-121. Both feature a rectangular ribbon that’s offset-mounted within the magnet structure (a Royer innovation) to allow greater ribbon excursion, which equates to higher SPL capability and less chance of ribbon damage when pointed in one direction, and a brighter sound in the other direction. The first thing I noticed was that the SE R-1 reveals greater proximity effect than the R-121, especially at distances of 5’’ or less. I can get it to sound “tubby” very easily by moving it closer to the source. Great for changing the tone of a guitar amp. But for vocals, depending on the skill of the singer, this can be a good thing or a bad thing; a talented singer will use mic’ing distance and therefore proximity effect to his or her advantage. The next thing I noticed was how the SE R-1 reacts to my Great River MP-2NV preamp’s input impedance switch. Engaging the switch and thus lowering the input impedance to 300 Ohms really opens up the sound of the SE R-1 without making it too thin. When I’m mixing guitar amps recorded with an R-121, I find that in most cases, I have to peel away some lower midrange to make room for bass and drums and to generally clear up the mix. But in general, when I record Fender amps through an R-121 with the MP-2NV’s impedance switch engaged, the sound seems a little too thin for me as there’s too much high-freq lift and the low-end slopes away too much. With the SE R-1, the MP-2NV’s lower input impedance setting is “just right” for me; the guitar sits forward in the mix without sounding overly EQ’ed. On the other hand, if you want a crunchier top end, the SE R-1 is probably not the right mic as it tends to soften the highs more than the R-121 does (and there’s an associated loss of detail), which makes the R-1 a great choice for recording singers or instruments that tend toward sibilance or screechiness. And speaking of crunchy, I’ve never been successful recording distorted rhythm parts on my Marshall JCM800 Model 4210 combo with an R-121. On the other hand, the SE R-1 in front of the 4210 going through a Hamptone Silverbox 4 sounds great. The low end is right where I want it, and the 4210’s tendency to go thin when it goes into extreme distortion isn’t accentuated as it sometimes is when I use an R-121. I also used the SE R-1 to great effect recording tambourine. This is an instrument that can really sound harsh and spikey if recorded improperly. With the SE, I got a nice, consistent sound by aiming the dark side of the mic at the tambourine and letting the bright side pick up reflections off the wall, limiting (clipping) with a Radius 30, and then squashing with a FATSO Jr. To sum it up, the SE R-1 and the R-121 have very similar voicing, but there are notable differences. SE has a generous try-before-buy policy. If you’re in the market for a ribbon, check out the SE website for details on the 7-day loan program. ($999 MSRP; www.seelectronics.com) –AH
Reviews/(continues on page 74)
Telefunken | USA RM-5C ribbon mic Students enrolled in the Audio Production program at Webster University, St. Louis and I had the great experience of evaluating the new Telefunken USA ribbon microphone, the RM-5C. The students participated as engineers, listeners and musicians. The setup was quick and not at all scientific, but informative anyway. We used only two microphones, a classic Coles 4038 and the RM-5C. As I suspected, these mics are pretty much polar opposites. The sound sources were male voice, female voice, acoustic guitar, tenor saxophone, and a pair of congas. The signal path was simple—microphone to Gordon Instruments Model 5 preamp to RADAR 24 running at 24 bits, 96 kHz. Listening to male and female voice, the RM-5C gave a good sound right off. With a student speaking 4’’ away from the microphone, the bass was full. Proximity effect was well controlled even at that distance. The bass was tight—never muffled or muddy. Characteristic of the microphone is a rise in the mid and high frequencies. Speech sibilance was highlighted but not out of balance. The bass bump at 200 Hz creates some bottom, preventing the mic from being too bright overall. I think it’s important for me to stress that in no circumstance did the RM-5C ever sound harsh, strident, or unpleasant. It maintains its appeal with a smooth sound even though its frequency response is “tipped up”. The Coles offered it classic warmth and smoothness, but was dull without some equalization. The 4038’s proximity effect also made it sound tubby. The RM-5C has a very tight cardioid pattern with some tonal change at 90 and 270 degrees. The rejection at 180 degrees was excellent. What was heard from that angle still sounded quite good. For the instruments, we placed the RM-5C for “best sound”. The mic’s 200 Hz bump is large enough to add some sense of bass for voice. However, it didn’t give the necessary bottom to the tenor sax (as a jazz instrument) that the Coles did. The RM-5C was certainly a good choice for guitar. As I listened to the guitar in the control room and then again in the studio, the RM-5C was giving us the guitar pretty much as it sounded in the studio. The Telefunken was an instant winner for congas. The skin and “thunk” of the drums were wonderfully captured by the mic. Transient response was very good. The 4038 simply couldn’t match that character. The RM-5C is well-made, handsome, and stylish. It is a microphone worth owning. I would like to see a wooden box for the mic; I think that is necessary. I would like to see a better shockmount, if only as an option, but the current one is acceptable. The Audio Production students and I were quite impressed with this new microphone. ($TBA; www.telefunkenusa.com) –Barry Hufker, www.hufkerrecording.com
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Chameleon Labs TS-1 small-diaphragm condenser mic The sonic combination of a small-capsule microphone diaphragm with a tube amplifier can be a thoroughly pleasing one for many applications. The high-frequency definition and quick transient-response of the small diaphragm coupled with the moderating and sweetening response of a well-designed tube circuit can be magical, and sounds like nothing else. I’ve got a bunch of Altec “lipstick tube” microphones, both omni and cardioid, and love them for overheads and acoustic guitar. More recently, we’ve been lucky to own a Telefunken KM 256C, which rules on acoustic guitar and piano top end, and a Telefunken SM 2 stereo tube SDC, which is equally lovely on strings and as a drum-kit overhead. These days, those microphones, for all their beauties, are costly both to purchase and to maintain. When I first got involved in recording (during the Cretaceous or was it the Mesozoic Era?), it seems that there were only two classes of microphones: mundane and moderately priced; and great but expensive. It is wonderful to see good affordable alternatives becoming available—a stellar example being the Chameleon Labs TS-1 smalldiaphragm tube mic. Chameleon makes products available that are very strong in the bang-for-the-buck category, with good craftsmanship and warranties. They often poll people as to what they would like to have available. In fact, at TapeOpCon 2007, they had a drawing for a free TS-1, and on the entry form was a big space for “what would you like us to offer next?” The pencil-type TS-1 has a 3 micron diaphragm and uses a 5840 pentode tube, strapped for triode operation. This tube is also used in the amplified Royer ribbon mics, and is the same as the European EF732 used in some of the Telefunken USA re-issues. It looks nice with its little vents for the tube and gets pleasantly warm when in use. The circuit is “plate loaded” with a high-ratio transformer inside the microphone body, and the power supply has seven stages of R/C filtering on the non-regulated B+, four stages of filtering on the regulated heater voltage, and a toroidal transformer. Translation? It’s quiet. Included in the snazzy, lockable aluminum suitcase are the 115/230 V power supply, tube microphone body, both cardioid and omni capsules, a 25 ft seven-pin cable, foam windscreen, and shockmount with spare elastics. This last inclusion may sound small, but consider that I just spent $60 on elastics for three Neumann suspension mounts. Available options for the TS-1 include a hypercardioid capsule ($62), and the ADP-1 adapter ($42) for AKG CK series capsules (though not the CK 5). So, C 451 lovers can “tube” their capsules! The power supply is interesting in that it has both a power switch and a standby switch, like a tube guitar amp. It’s recommended to turn the power switch on first, then lift the standby switch after ten or fifteen seconds, allowing the plate (B+) voltage to be turned on after the tube has heated to full temperature; this extends the life of the tube. Generally, it’s a good idea to let tube microphones stabilize for fifteen minutes or more before use; the same goes for tube instrument amplifiers, compressors, and equalizers. The TS-1 can also be put into standby mode when taking a break, leaving it thermally stabilized and ready to use, though the manual recommends not leaving it in standby for more than a half hour.
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Reviews/(Fin.)
I do have, and love madly, a custom-built tube LDC also designed by Professor Terry Setter (the TS) of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington—an excellent human being who some of you may have met at past TapeOpCons. Terry also designed the large-capsule Chameleon TS-2 microphone, whose power supply features a variable heater voltage; it will be interesting to see how the TS-1’s sound might be varied using it. The shockmount works well and holds the microphones snugly. The cable between the PS and mic is rugged and makes a good connection. In the six months that I have been using a pair of TS-1s, I have had no problems with them—nary a sputter. They do carry a one-year warranty. The TS-1 has no internal shockmount or pop filter, and so should be used with the supplied mount, and with a windscreen if used as a vocal microphone or outdoors. I have used it as a vocal mic, with great results from some singers, though it wouldn’t be my usual first choice just based on its type. The Chameleon Labs TS-1 is a marvelous instrument. They have been used on nearly every project in the time they’ve been here. They excel particularly as drum overheads, on acoustic guitar, string bass and other stringed instruments, on percussion, and piano. They have a sweet top-end but are not strident. I love our aforementioned Telefunken SM 2 for overheads and the velvety bell-like quality that it imparts. The Chameleons to me sound bolder and more sharply etched, and I have to say are my new favorites for this application. I find that they tend to need little to no equalization when used as drum overheads or on acoustic instruments and percussion. It’s cool that the TS-1 comes with both cardioid and omnidirectional capsules. It is very much worth outgrowing the sound reinforcement habit of always using directional mics and experimenting with omnis. When using the TS-1 as a drum mic, especially when the mics are farther away, the omni capsule can open up the room nicely and eliminate or reduce the coloration that can come from off-axis pickup. Likewise, omnis are underused, in my opinion, on acoustic guitars. Since they don’t exhibit the rising bass from proximity that cardioid and other directional mics do, they can be very useful for guitarists who move around a lot. You can control the varying volume easily with compression or gain riding as needed, but it’s very useful to have the timbre remain the same—the guitar sits more stably in the mix. Though the TS-1 has no pad, it doesn’t seem to need one. It’s rated at a maximum of 130 dB SPL, and I haven’t detected distortion even from loud drummers. It’s pretty great on snare drum too—I need a third one! The TS-1 seems to sell for not much less than MSRP—rightfully so. It’s totally worth it. –Mark Rubel, www.pogostudio.net We’ve had a pair of TS-1’s at The Hangar for the last six months or so, and they’ve seen a fair amount of use in that time. It seems that almost every time I walk back to the studio, there’s at least one TS-1 out on the floor. I’ve made a point of asking the engineers what they thought about the TS-1 and listening to the track. One of the TS-1’s first sessions was with engineer Ralph Stover. I’ve always loved the drum sounds Ralph gets here. A near perfect mix of close-mic’ing and room sound-commercial but not at all sterile sounding. He always seems to get set up very quickly, using essentially the same mics and preamps each session, going for what he knows will work. That’s why I was a bit surprised to see the TS-1 as the snare mic. “Sounds amazing,” was Ralph’s comment, and I had to agree. Everything you wanted from the snare, solid body – not too woofy - and nice top end, but
not too much high end; nor was it harsh. Very natural sounding. The next time I heard the TS-1 on a track was when engineer, and Tape Op’s pre-press dude, Scott McChane used them on an acoustic guitar track for Alaska based artist, Matt Hopper. Again, the mic just sounded great - really natural with just the right amount of low mids and a nice, natural top end. On a session for the band Say No More on Drive Thru Records, engineer Robert Cheek used the TS-1s for top and bottom snare mics (in conjunction with a Heil PR-20) and kept them up for the entire record. The snare had that perfect pop/punk snare tone that only got better when Robert ran it through the Chandler/EMI TG 12413 limiter and TG12345 EQ. Engineer Eric Broyhill has also been using the TS-1s as overheads, and his comment was, “They sound awesome. Warm but with an extended top end. I could really see each cymbal without it being washy. I had them placed pretty high too, about eight feet above the kit.” This mic seems to excel at capturing sources with potentially challenging top-end transients as noted in the examples here. I’ve always really liked SDC’s as used above, but I’ve heard some that are brittle and harsh from over-hyped top end. Or, the preamp section seems to be less than flattering above 8 kHz or so, adding an unpleasant distortion that sounds great on really shitty worn-out acoustic guitar strings, beat-up snare heads, and filthy cymbals, but not so nice on good instruments with good players. And who amongst us really wants to buy mics that only sound good on shitty sources? For me, the holy grail of SDC’s is the Neumann KM 84, a mic I’ve used extensively over the years but don’t currently own due to its cost. Of course, I’ve always wanted to hear, but have not yet been fortunate enough to hear, the tube-based Neumann KM 54, a mic that is essentially the same type as the TS-1. I’ve found the Audio Technica Pro 37 to be a very nice and affordably priced SDC. But, the mic that has kept me from buying a costly pair of KM 84s on eBay is the THE KA-04 body with the THE cardioid capsule. This mic is so close to what I remember the KM-84 sounding like, that whatever differences there are, I’m going to just chalk them up to my auditory-brain interface and my wallet-brain interface keeping a happy balance. I, and all of the engineers above, have been using the THEs for the past three years, and they are universally regarded as sounding pretty much excellent on whatever source they’re put on. So, as a final test of the TS-1, I thought it would be interesting to compare them to the THEs that we all know and love around The Hangar. Scott, Bryce Gonzales, and I made two short recordings with both mics: a Guild steel string acoustic both strummed and finger picked; and a hihat cymbal both open and closed. On both sources, both mics sounded excellent and remarkably close to each other, especially below 8 kHz or so. But, the THE had a bit more extended top end and better transient response. I couldn’t really say that one or the other mic sounded better, they both sounded great. The THE has had years of successful use on tracks here by all of the above engineers, and I think the TS-1 will soon be joining it. The main difference is in the top end as noted. If I were recording to analog tape, I’d probably put up the THE first, whereas if I was recording to digital, I’d probably go with the TS-1. If I wanted an acoustic guitar to really cut through a dense track, I’d go with the THE, but if I were looking for a guitar track to sit a little bit more in the background, or if the track was pretty open, I might go with the TS-1 first. Bottom line, every recordist should have at least one SDC in their mic locker, and the TS-1 is a versatile and excellent sounding mic. If this were your only SDC, you’d be in great shape. ($499 MSRP; www.chameleonlabs.com) -JB
One more review on page 78>>>
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76/Tape Op#60/Mastering Services
CD
BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY* BROKEBACK* CALIFONE* CHIK, CHIK, CHIK* DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE* HOWE GELB* JIMMIE EAT WORLD QUASI* SLEATER KINNEY* PINBACK* LOVE AS LAUGHTER THE ALUMINUM GROUP THE GOSSIP* A-FRAMES* THE SEA & CAKE* TORTOISE*
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CAT POWER ELLIOT SMITH GUIDED BY VOICES INTERPOL LARGE PROFESSOR PEDRO THE LION SOFT BOYS YO LA TENGO
*also mastered to vinyl
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Here are some short reviews of a handful of the new releases that we’ve been enjoying down here at Tape Op headquarters. Many of these artists are the ones who will be making the cool sounds of tomorrow, so support them! -LC Victor Krummenacher The Cock Crows at Sunrise My pal Victor is known as the bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom and sometimes with Cracker, but here he presents his fifth solo album. This album, produced by Bay Area mainstay and excellent pedal steel player Bruce Kaphan, strikes me as Victor’s finest solo outing. Why? His voice is more assured than ever, reminding me of an Americana-tinged John Cale. The playing has a spontaneous, slightly loose (but not sloppy) feel that is inviting, and in some cases very Band-influenced. It turns out that much of the album was recorded live in the studio with few overdubs - ah ha. The sound of this record is superb as well - everything seems to have the right place to sit, even when the mix is busier. The band features Kaphan, drummer John Hanes, David Immergluck and Tape Op’s buddy, Chris Xefos - as well as a huge collection of other players. Sessions were tracked at Fantasy Studios. A big hats off to Victor and Bruce for a job well done. (www.victorkrummenacher.com) -LC Robert Forster and Grant McLennan Intermission - The Best Of The Solo Recordings One of my favorite experiences was recording the Go-Betweens’ “comeback” album, in 2000, soon after interviewing Robert for issue #14. The band had been defunct for 11 years, but these two tremendous songwriters had put out four solo albums each during that time. This collection is culled from those albums, hand picked by Robert and Grant prior to Grant’s untimely passing last year. If you’re a Go-Betweens fan like myself I highly recommend finding all the albums, but for the casual fan this double CD is a great place to start. It’s also fascinating to compare the tracks from different albums - like how Robert’s Mick Harvey-produced Danger in the Past material (large and spacious) differs from the Edwyn Collins-produced Warm Nights tracks (close and dark sounding). All in all this is a fine collection from a pair of always-underrated songwriters, one of whom is sadly no longer with us. (www.beggars.com) -LC The Stooges The Weirdness Some 33 years on, the core Stooges (Iggy and the Ashton brothers) reunite to record their fourth album. Can people hitting sixty still rock out as dumb and primal as ever? Yup, sort of. Steve Albini (issue #10) recorded them (with Mike Watt filling in on bass and Funhouse sax player Steve MacKay) at his Electrical Audio studios in Chicago. It’s raw, and loose, with basics and most vocals tracked live, yet it’s totally different sounding than its closest relative, the legendary “off the floor” Funhouse. Albini gets his usual “drums in the room” sound, and that seems to stay the same through the whole album. The guitars appear to have the same panning and overdubs on every song. There’s a claustrophobic sound to Iggy’s vocals, like he’s eating the mic while the band is back in the room with the drums. I guess my beef with the record is the “sameness” that permeates every song. I keep going back to Funhouse, and wondering what’s different. Those tracks have a different kind of sameness (more reverb, more openness to the sound), so maybe it’s just down to the songwriting and the band’s own dynamics - they don’t really play with the same subtlety that worked on the Funhouse sessions. But shit, there’s also something here that works - the rawness being a better option than the slick, commercial punk style recordings (think Blink-182) that could have been applied to this to no good end. Mastered at Abbey Road. (www.iggypop.com) -LC Scott Bomar Black Snake Moan OST/DVD I thought this was a really great movie on just about every level, a very soulful character driven story, so check it out if you haven’t yet seen it. Tape Op readers may remember Scott from issue 44 when we traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to check out the recording scene there. Since that piece was published, Scott did the soundtrack to Hustle and Flow and now Black Snake Moan, his second close collaboration with director Craig Brewer. This DVD is still worth watching even if you saw the movie when it was in the theatre. There are several short bonus features on the making of the film, including one solely focused on the soundtrack with lots of great studio footage at Ardent and interview segments with Scott. The soundtrack was recorded at Ardent (issue 58) with musicians primarily from Memphis. Jim Dickinson (issue 19) plays keyboards while his sons, Luther and Cody (North Mississippi All Stars), play guitar and drums on some tracks. The film is dedicated to the late R.L. Burnside, so it’s only fitting that R.L.’s grandson Cedric plays drums and his adopted son, Kenny Brown, plays guitar on one key track (issue 40 has an interview with Bruce Watson, who’s worked with R.L. and lots of other artists on the Fat Possum label.) Charlie Musselwhite adds some nice atmospheric harmonica, while the Spirit of Memphis Gospel Group lend their voices to the soundtrack. The list of great musicians from Memphis and the surrounding area just keeps going: Jason Freeman, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Big Jack Johnson all figure prominently into the movie’s score. In one of the featurettes, director Brewer comments that he and Scott have three more movies they want to make, in which the music of Memphis is a key element to the film. I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing what they do next. -JB
78/Tape Op#60/music Reviews/
Sounds Like Drums SLD Total 44.1 ReFill Michael Moushon and Glenn Forsythe are Boston-based musicians with lengthy studio tenures and expertise in development of music production tools. The pair undertook a major endeavor with Sounds Like Drums, which was initially available as a ReFill for Propellerhead Reason. The audio content is now also formatted for use with Native Instruments KONTAKT 2, iZotope iDrum, and Ableton Live as 24-bit samples at either 44.1 kHz or 96 kHz rates. The heart of SLD was the effort to capture as much depth and nuance as possible from both a classic 1960s Rogers five-piece drum kit and a high-end, modern DW kit. Moushon and Forsythe filled over a dozen reels of Quantegy GP9 analog tape at a Boston studio, recording drummer Greg Kitto and other local session players. Kitto tracked the Rogers kit with a variety of snare drums, using wood sticks, hot rods, brushes, mallets, and his bare hands. The kits were captured with a collection of premium mics (Neumann, Royer, AEA, etc.) and preamps (Neve, Telefunken, Universal Audio, etc.). An additional partner, Randall Robbins, was instrumental in developing SLD for KONTAKT 2. SLD appeals chiefly to rock/pop producers or desktop musicians who would prefer a live drummer but simply don’t have access or means to accommodate one. These aren’t dry, isolated samples. All mics capture the character of the studio’s live room in addition to performance quirks and the characters of the kits themselves. The result is a much more convincing “performance” straight out of the box. Forsythe and others assembled painstaking demos in styles ranging from driving, Beatlesesque pop to hot raga, with impressive results. With velocity mapping of thirteen layers on the Rogers kit, very authentic sounding performances are possible, depending upon the time invested. My mixing and mastering room at The Happy Club is built around Logic Pro. Logic users unfamiliar with the process of ReWiring Reason into Logic are welcome to email me for a useful tutorial I found online and some personal notes. Essentially, Logic requires creation of an Audio Instrument for sending MIDI data to Reason and a pair of Audio Objects for stereo playback. Or you can use the Logic/ReWire/Reason templates included with SLD. Default Reason rack configurations are also included in order to get you programming beats quickly. Users can use Reason’s NN-XT sampler to customize the kits by swapping snares/sticks and “moving” room mics or altering the amount of microphone bleed. I used SLD to demo new songs for a short tour by my band Ping. Once I had the ReWire process sorted (a personal first), sequencing was as easy with the ReFill as using my old Steinberg LM-4 bank, the creaky old Alesis HR-16, or Logic’s own UltraBeat; and for rock and roll, it sounded better than any of those. I also saw great results using SLD when tracking a guitarist who wasn’t playing well to a click track. Others may be available, but SLD is the first multisampled drum library I’ve encountered with all samples tracked analog to tape. If you’re really hunting for artifacts of the analog process, a few can be found. Crank the volume and overcompress an isolated cymbal crash, and maybe you’ll hear a ghost tap on the snare. I heard some vocal chatter at the tail of one kick drum sample. But given that this package includes over 10,000 samples, the attention to detail is pretty staggering. Sounds Like Drums takes advantage of traditional analog recording methods and puts them in the hands of both non-traditional desktop musicians and pros alike. I’ll always prefer live drummers, but I’m sure I’ll use SLD for keeper tracks before long. ($85 MSRP for SLD Total 44.1, $100 for Total 96, other packages available for $20-$350; www.soundslikedrums.com) –Jeff Elbel, www.marathonrecords.com/ping
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Our Fantasy Gear Wish List by Larry Crane, John Baccigaluppi and Andy Hong
Here’s a list of things that would make our recording lives easier.
82/Tape Op#60/The End Rant
