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September/October 1989 $2.95

serving:recording, broadcast and sound contracting fields

MAGAZINE

Insights on Mastering

Five Boston Recording Studigls

Lab Report 1ART's MultiVeil?-EkTik

Hands On

Audio in the Church

Learned: In North Africa

Hot Tips from Barilla;

and Hoffner, Battles,

and Bartlett

LamThe Editor:In Len Feldman's review of the Rock-

tron Hush IICX Noise -Reduction unit,

there is a difference between dBv (the

way we measure output on this unit)

and dBV (which Mr. Feldman ap-parently used). Further, since all themeasurements in the article werequoted in dBV, which measurementswere used in the Vital Statistics where

the measurements were in dBv, whenthey should have been in dBV?

Jint Waller

Rocktron

Len Feldman responds:Upon further investigation, I have de-

termined that Rocktron is correct. Inother words, my AP equipment was set

up to measure dBV (ref: 1V=0 dB).

Thus +18 dBV does indeed equal ap-proximately +20 dBv.

The only points of error are in the

Vital Statistics chart, where the threereferences to dBv (lower case v)shouldhave been dBV as Mr. Waller has cor-

rectly pointed out.

While the error is ours (mine) I

frankly feel that even maximum inputlevel and line output levels as incor-

rectly appearing in the Vital Statisticschart (18 dBv) represent excellentamounts of headroom. After all, 20 dB

above 1 volt equals 10 volts,while 20dBabove 0.775 volts RMS equals 7.75volts. Both numbers are well abovewhat one is likely to feed into thisequipment.

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dbEditor/Publisher

Larry Zide

Associate PublisherElaine Zide

Senior EditorJohn Barilla

Editorial AssistantEdward Lieber

Contributing EditorsBruce BartlettBrian BattlesDrew DanielsLen FeldmanRobyn Gately

Randy Hoffner

Graphics & LayoutKaren Cohn

BPA Audit applied for May 1989

db, The Sound Engineering Magazine(ISSN 0011-7145)

is published Eli -monthly by Sagamore Publishing Com-

pany Inc. Entire contents copyright 1989 by SagamorePublishing Company Inc., 203 Commack Road, Suite

1010, Commack, NY 11725. Telephone: (518)588-6530.

db Magazine is published for individuals and firms in

professional audio recording, broadcast audio-visual,

sound reinforcement -contracting, consultants, video

recording, film sound, etc. Application for subscription

should be made on the subscription form in the rear ofeach Issue. Subscriptions are $15.00 per year($28.00

per year outside U.S. Possessions, $16.00 per year InCanada)and payable In U.S funds. Single copies are

$2.95 each. Editorial, Publishing, and Sales offices are

at 203 Commack Road, Suite 1010, Commack NY11725. Second Class postage paid at Commack, NY

11725 and an additional mailing office. Postmaster:Form 3579 should be sent to db Magazine, 203 Corn-

mack Road, Suite 1010, Commack, NY 11725.

Trademarked names are editorially used throughout

this issue. Rather than place a trademark symbol next

to each occurance, we state that these names are used

only In an editorial fashion and to the benefit of thetrademark owner, and that there is no intention of trade-

mark Infringement.

Circle 13 on Reader Service Card

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Due to an oversight on our parts, Electro-Voice was left out of last issue's Buyers Guide on Microphones. This is theinformation that should have been there.

ELECTRO-VOICE, INC. (A MARK IV COMPANY)N/D408 dyn super 60-18k 150 50 4.55 6.7 blk XLR $249.10

card 3 2.85N/D457 dyn hyper 55-18k 150 50 7.12 7 blk XLR $242.20

card 3 2.05N/D757 dyn super 50-18k 150 50 7.12 7.7 blk XLR $319.90

card 3 2.05BK-1 cond card 50-18k 150 50 7.5 12 blk XLR $192.80

3 1.97RE45 dyn card 150-12 600 50 135 11.5 7.5 blk XLR $405.00N/D 3 1 1.87RE20 dyn card 45-18k 150 57 8.5 26 fawn XLR $555.95

3 2.3 beigePL10 dyn super 75-15k 150 55.8 5.3 11 gray XLR $298.80

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Pivoting instrument mic with special element for wide fre-quency response and high outputHand-held vocal mic with hypercardioid pattern for very highgain before feedback.Hand-held vocal mic with extended frequency response, switch -able low -frequency roll -off fitter and special element.Hand-held electret condenser mic offering condenser sound andhigh performance.Short shotgun mic designed for hand-held field applicationsrequiring ruggedness and reliability.Wide response studio mic for demanding recording, reinforce-ment and broadcast applications.Variable instrument mic for recording and reinforcementapplications.Hand held vocal mic designed for high gain before feedback,low handling noise, and smooth frequency response.

Dual receiver, true diversity using two separate receivers on thefront end. The mic head is the N/D757 capsule.

Cd.e4skevl Synergetic Audio Concepts of Nor-

man, Indiana, announces a series ofspecial three day classes to be held at

ACOUSTIC CONTROLQUICK TSOuBLIETNDRAFpIETVT"

"... for sampling and vocal work, we couldn't askfor anything more." -Pete Townsend

QSFTH links talent to the mic with to-day's most advanced acoustic tech-nology. The Quick Sound Field"' putsmore control where you need it. Signals so crisp, yet dry, they stay clean through

time delay, reverb and digital sampling.

Instrument and lead solos spring to life in mixdownand sound huge when double -tracked.

II Retrofit kits for any room. Easy to install even be-tween sessions and without costly renovation.

Call our studio design group at1-800-ASC-TUBE.

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the Syn-Aud-Con farm in Southern In-diana. These classes feature the oppor-tunity for gaining direct learningexperiences for specific objectives infundamental audio systems measure-ment and analysis.

The Farm in Southern Indiana:September 22-24, and October 5-7.

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Orlando, FL: November 15-16

For additional information, call orwrite:

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The Sony Professional AudioTraining Group in Fort Lauderdale,Florida has announced its 1989schedule of technical service trainingcourses and engineering seminars. Theprogram is designed to educate theprofessional audio industry aboutchanging technology and new pro-ducts, and is aimed at systems designersand studio engineers, technical servicepersonnel, dealers, end users and en-gineering instructors and students.

The courses and seminars are held ina fully operational, state-of-the-artfacility located in the Sony ProfessionalProducts Company in Fort Lauder-dale, Florida. Upon request coursescan be conducted on -site at recording

studios, video post -production facili-ties, dealerships, corporations or col-leges and universities.

Here are the dates: September 28 to29 -Broadcast Console Applications October 2 to 6 - Sony MXP-2000Technical Service November 7 to 10 -Sony APR -5000 Technical Service November 13 to 17 - Sony APR -24Technical Service December 6 to 8 -Large Console Applications Decem-ber 11 to 15 - Sony MXP-3000 Techni-cal Service

For further information contact Ray-mond Callahan or James Gayoso at(305) 491-0825, Ext. 186.

SPARS (The Society of Pro-fessional Audio Recording Services)will host a technical conference andaudio work station interface with lead-ing international manufacturers. Theevent will take place in Chicago, thisSeptember 23 and 24. Murray Allen,president of Universal Recording, willchair the events, with SPARS presidentBruce Merley, executive director Shir-ley Kaye, and other SPARS boardmembers in attendance. Manufac-turers participating and providinghands-on demonstrations will include,AMS, DAR, Lexicon, New EnglandDigital, SSL, and Waveframe.All events will take place in the Mid-

land Hotel, 172 West Adams at LaSalle, Chicago, Illinois. For further in-formation, please contact: ShirleyKaye, Executive Director, SPARS,4300 Tenth Avenue North, Suite 2,Lake Worth, Florida 33461. lelephone(407)641-6648


THERE'S ABIG IDEABEHINDOUR NEWPCM-3324A

It's the PCM-3348, Sony's 48 -channeldigital breakthrough. The technologybehind our new PCM-3324A.

The FCM-3324A is Sony's secondgeneration DASH 24 -channel multitrackrecorder, incorporating key technologiesdeveloped for the PCM-3348. Like 2Xoversampl,ng with digital filters forenhanced sonic performance. Reducedpower consumption. And upward com-patibility with the PCM-3348.

But as remarkable as the technologyof the PCM-3324A and PCM 3348 is, thetrue beauty of the family of DASH prod-ucts is that they compliment the waymusic is made. Tracks laid down on thePCM-3324A play back flawlessly on thePCM-3348. And are undisturbed as the

SONY

PCM-3348 adds up to 24 more channelsof digital audio to the original recording.

Clearly, the creative possibilities arelimitless. To explore them, call yourregional Sony Professional Audio office:East: (201) 368-5185. West: (818) 841-8711. South: (615) 883-8140. Central:(312)773-6001.

Sony Communications Products Company. 1600 Queen Anne Road.Teaneck, NJ 07666. « 1989 Sony Corporation of America. Sony is aregistered trademark of Sony.

PROFESSIONAL AUDIO

EloatentMany of you may well be seeing this issue for the first time, havingpicked it up at the New York

AES Convention. It's a good introduction to our way of doing things. For example:The theme of this issue is a visit to the city of Boston. Toward that end, we commissioned Steve

Langstaff, who is affiliated with the Berklee School of Music in that city. Steve obliged with fivestudios in or around Boston-Soundtrack, Editel, Silver Linings, Vizwiz, and Target. Eachoffers its own individual personality, business approach, and recording sophistication.

As a sixth Bostonian offering, Jay Rose's Attic Studio takes the concept of the ElectronicCottage to its full professional flowering.

The cover story, however, takes us to the foremost mastering studio of the east, Masterdisk.Senior Editor John Barilla interviewed Masterdisk's Bob Ludwig. I'm sure you will find Bob'shistory and his comments about the latest mastering technologyuseful. But be sure to note the finaltwo pages in which Bob tells all of us how to prepare tapes, particularly digital tapes, for mastering.

This issue also introduces a new column, Audio for the Church, written by Brent Harshbarger.Brent has installed many sound systems in numerous large and small churches. He will be sharinghis special knowledge with us.

Along these lines, read Ed Learned's latest installment, entitled Sound Reinforcement inNorth Africa, Part I. Ed continues to tour the world for the United States Information Agency,and his articles continue to explore the real world of providing superior sound reinforcement underextremes of environmental constraints.

Many of you are aware that db Magazine actively participates in a number of conventions andshows. This issue, as already mentioned, is receiving extra distribution at the NY AES Convention.We also exhibit at the two NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) dealer -only shows(although large numbers of end users do seem to get in). One show, held in January in Anaheim,California, displays and therefore attracts many attendants and exhibits from manufacturers oftechnology products for recording and sound reinforcement, along with the more traditionalmusical instruments.

These same exhibitors also go to the Summer Expo that NAMM hosts in June in Chicago, andperiodically in other cities as well. For manufacturers of technology-rich products, that summershow has been increasingly frustrating, mostly because ofsteadily reducing attendance.

At the Expo held this year, petitions were passed around, and actively signed, to do away with thesummer shows. These may be misguided in part, since the summer show may well still be needed bythe musical instrument people.

It's our theory that NAMM's two basic exhibit factions, technology and traditional instrumentsseem to be going in different directions. It seems that the music people need a summer show to sell todealers for the school year and Christmas selling seasons. The technology people need a winter showto sell into the summer touring season.

These are simplifications, of course. Perhaps the real reason for the problems of the summershow's declining attendance is that dealers simply don't need two shows. The music dealer of todayis a far cry from the small musical instrument stores of yesterday. Today's dealer may well still havea guitar department, and even do a brisk business in school -year instrument rentals. But more andmore he must also be selling the products of the technology companies-amplifiers, speakersystems, recording systems, synthesizers, and all sorts of MIDI -equipped products. Does this dealerneed two shows? The evidence so far seems to lead to the belief that he doesnot. Further, he prefersto go to the winter show in Anaheim.

In sum, we are not necesarily advocating one show. But it seems clear that for manymanufacturers and their dealers, one NAMM show a year is what is needed.

Since NAMM's voting membership is the music retailer, it's going to be interesting to see whatwill happen in the coming few years. L.Z.

Incredible stereo.Great imagingNo trade-offs.

Until now, there havebeen only two choices forstereo microphones.

Mid side and X -Y micsgave good mono compatibilitybut produced wishy-washyimaging and sacrificed ambi-ence. The second choice,near -coincident pairs, producedsharper imaging at the expenseof poor mono compatibility andrequired awkward stands andfield assembled parts.

Either way, low end hasbeen weak and off -axis colora-tion lurked in the background.

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See your Crown represen-tative. You'll find the newSASS family stands aloneas THE choice for stereo.No trade-offs.

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1718 W. MISHAWAKA ROAD, ELKHART, IN 46517Circle 17 on Reader Service Card

Graham NashMember, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Fostex Equipment: E-16 MTR, 4050 MIDI Remote,T-20 Headphones.

Recent Projects: Graham's recent solo album, "InnocentEyes" (Atlantic) was recorded in Los Angeles, Hawaiiand Massachusetts. Most of the compositions andarrangements were worked out at home onhis E-16. The hit "Shadowland" from CSN&Y'slatest album, "American Dream" (Atlantic),was recorded on the E-16.

TIMBUK3Pat & Barbara K. MacDonald

Fostex Equipment D-20 DigitalMaster Recorder, E-8 MTR,4030/4035 Synchronizer /

Controller, 4010 SMPTE TimeCode Generator, RM-865 andRM-900 Near -Field Reference

Monitors, T-20 Headphones.

Recent Projects: TIMBUK3's firstalbum, "Greetings from TIMBUK3"

(1.RS.), was recorded on a B-16(forerunner of the E-16). Their third

and newest album, "Edge ofAllegiance" (I.RS.), is the firstdigital project for the group.

They use a D-20.

Tom ScottMusician/Composer

Fostex EquipmentE-16 MTR (2), E-2 Master

Recorder, 4030/4035 Synchronizer /Controller, 4010 SMPTE Time Code

Generator, T-20 Headphones.Recent Projects: Nationally recognized bandleader of "The Pat Sajak Show", Tom's latest

albums are "Streamlines" and "Flashpoint"(GRP Records). :-Ie also scored the NBC TV

Movie "American River': and the film "Sea ofLove" starring Al Pacino features his distinctive sax.

Throughout the audioproduction cycle-from

composilon/demo tomulti7ack master to d_gital stereo

master-you'll find Fostex prxluctsin use ty professionai composers,

arrangers, engineers and producers You hearthe results of Fostex Project Studios eve!), day

on TV, film soundtracks and, of couse, radio &records. Itust Fostex for great products at great prices.

mist in yourself for the sound of success.

Fostex©1989 Fostex Corporation of America

15431 Blackburn Ave. Norwalk, CA 90650(213) 921-1112 FAX (213) 802-1964

"NW -"OP%

Stewart LevinMusician/Composer

Fostex Equipment: B-16 MTR, 4030/4035 Synchronizer/Controller, 4010 SMPTE Time Code Generator, T-20 Headphones.

Recent Projects: Stewart writes the music for several popularTV shows - "thirtysomething', "The Wonder Years', "The Dick

Van Dyke Show '88" - and he scored the feature film "Heathers':


JOHN BARILLA

InsighMasterin.algThe author, db Magazine's Senior Editor, interviews Ludwig and takes man a visit to Master-disk Corporation.

The role of the masteringengineer has undergone aa subtle but steadychange over the past tenyears. The image used to

be one of a technical virtuoso whosejob was to optimize a master re-cording for commercial release, andperhaps-more heroically-to re-suscitate marginal mixes, therebysaving not just an occasional pro-ducer from the wrath of recordcompany executives. As such, themastering engineer has been ac-corded a place of great honor in theaudio industry. None of this, ofcourse, has diminished in the least.

But a new and exciting dimensionhas been added to the mastering en-gineer's role. They have become, asBob Ludwig puts it, "little pro-ducers," participating in the shape ofa recording long before it ever arrivesat the mastering laboratory. Ludwig,who is currently Chief Engineer andVice -President of Masterdisk, NewYork's premier mastering facility,and is sought out daily for his inputon a rather conspicuous number ofmajor record releases. Why? Becausea sonic consultation with Ludwigseems to be worth its (proverbial)weight in gold-or perhaps evenplatinum.

Perhaps "sonic consultant" is abetter and more descriptive termthan "little producer." Ludwig'sopinion-(and those of his well -

trained staff) are much more thanremedial afterthoughts. Instead, formajor artists at least, the -se opinionsare budgeted in and constantly util-ized from the very inception of theproject. They have come to be seen asan indispensable tool in crafting acommercially and aestheticallysuccessful musical product. Ludwigoffers an example:

"A cou of summers ago, whenBruce ngsteen was doing the`Live' um; we worked on it fromJune to Septemben a little bit everyday for the whole summer."

dwig and his staff received bitspieces of the project daily andrmed what could be termedrimental mastering"- cutting

rences" for this five -record set.T artist and the production teamw d listen to the references as wellas mments from Ludwig, mostofte finding something which couldbe)r.in ved prior to the actual mas-tering. This "feedback" generatedfrom th mastering engineer oftenresulted i mixes or even re -track-ing. "More o n than not," says Lud-wig," Bruce w decide to changesome of his phrasing.",

expert opinion-see be the dis-tinguishing mark of a t recordtoday. Because there is such mpeti-tiveness in certain genres music(e.g., rock n' roll), it has - e ex-tremely important to give th pro-duct a frame of reference itscompetition. And this, of coubest be done under the labo oryconditions of the mastering suite.

THE DEFINITION OFMASTERING.

According to Bob Ludwifinalreative in the

"mas-teringsitis the crecord making chain and e firststep in the manufacturingc ain. It'sthat transition point."

While maste engineers arecapable ofm th technical andaesthetic Optsions, certain kinds of

This sort of interactive ' , by their very nature, requireduction-where immediate adjust- very little tweaking. For Bob Ludwig,ments can be made on the basis of classical music is certainly repre-

Figure 1. Part of one wall, plus additional aisles filled with gold andplatinum earnings by Masterdisk.

1/61°. "32r500 -SaysYou Can't Find a

Better Gate!"At Aphex we have a problem withthe President. Marvin Caesarwants everything the company

makes to be the "best." Marvin is notan engineer, he is an audio zealotwho doesn't understand the word"impossible."

When engineering approached himwith a design for a gate, he wasn't satis-fied. He wanted the ultimate gate, anexpander/gate that was extremely fast,perfectly click -free, loaded with features,with traditional Aphex audio quality.

Impossible with available technologythey said. Marvin wasn't satisfied.

So, the engineers developed a newVCA, the Aphex VCA 1001. Then theycreated the Aphex 612 Expander/Gate.Marvin was finally satisfied.

In fact, he is so confident that theAphex 612 is the world's best expander/gate he is offering $2500 to the personwho finds a better one. If you think you

Marvin Caesar, President

know of a commercially availableexpander/gate that can begin to com-pete with the Aphex 612, write for fulldetails of this offer.

If you would rather spend your timemore usefully, contact your professionalaudio dealer for a demo of the best!

Here are a few highlights of theworld's best expander/gate:

Attack time-variable from lessthan 4µSec (with no clicks!) to100mSec

Ratio-variable from 1.2:1 to 30:1 Range -0 to 100dB Bandwidth-5Hz to 100kHz,

+ 0, - 0.2dB THD @ + 20dBm-0.006% IMD (SMPTE) @ + 10dBm-0.006% Noise and hum-fully attenuated

- 94dBm Servo -Balanced Transformerless

Inputs and OutputsCan you beat that?

APHEX Aphex Systems Ltd. 11068 Randall StreetSYSTEMS Sun Valley, CA 91352 (818) 767-2929


sentative of this category. Live re-cordings done with two or three qu-ality microphones are usuallyperfectly coherent mixes-since airis the great summing amplifier. Butpop music is where the mastering en-gineer really needs to exercise crea-tive judgement. Bob Ludwigcompares pop music to 'musiqueconcrete'(the twentieth century ex-perimental musical form typified byPierre Boulez, using assorted soundsand noises in place of musical tones).

"Pop music," says Ludwig, "is re-ally 'musique concrete' because it's agroup of mixed -together sources thatnever existed in real-time, that arerecorded usually in different acousti-cal environments. When you start toput 24 or 48 channels together, itstarts to be more like mixing paintthan anything else. The more thingsyou blend together the more it turnsinto mud. Quite the opposite of a twoor three mic recording. (Pop music) isreally a function of the monitor sys-tem you are mixing on and the qu-ality of the console that it's beingmixed through." According to Lud-wig, the chances of getting a well-rounded mix are inversely propor-tional to the number of individualsound sources the mixer has to deal

Figure 2. The Neumann lathe has a copper disc on it with the DMM cut-ter poised along side.

with. He goes on to say: "Engineerssometimes don't get to spend asmuch time as you might think on amix. Some engineers only take threeor four hours to get the mix 90 per-cent there. Then, to get it that addi-tional 10 percent right, might takeanother four or five hours. A lot oftimes, because of budget, they don't

have time to do that. So a good en-gineer will know what he can getaway with in mastering, and willsay,Well, this mix is good enough.'Sometimes due to loud levels or allnight mixes, ears get fatigued. A lotof what we do is get the tape back towhat the producer thought he had inthe first place.

your first stage monitori

"Nowadays, in a facility like.amaikwhere you have rs like)Howie Weinbur d myself,peoplesend us ta anting our input.They don' give us any sugges-tions. ey just say, 'Do it like youhear i hat's the kind of situationthat on't really like, to tell you thetru I really prefer the artist'sin , be pause it's their record. And Idon't ever want to feel like I put myimprint on their musical concept."

Despite the considerable weight ofb Ludwig's opinion, his policy is to

always remain open to the artistsideas, even if they seem unorthodox.S ng of a situation where he waswor ng interactively with MichaelBeen, bass player and vocalist with"The ," Ludwig tells of how hewould ference tapes to Been,who was in Francisco. Been, whohad some stro opinions of his ownon how the ulti product shouldsound, would do some1111111Eing cnhis own equalizers, and then callasking Ludwig to try the newchanges.

dwig recounts the episode:lled with a suggestion

about idding : t seemed to me tobe a ridiculous : nt of bass. And Isaid, 'Well, it's his ', and I wentand did it.

And after I did it and listeningto the record, the record 'nd ofspoke to me in a new way. He 'd havea concept-kind of a uni con-cept-as to the way the recd ouldsound that didn't strike me initiallyas the right thing, but it turned outafter all, that it was the right thing."

Und yubtedly, Ludwig's respect forartistic expression, and willingnessto 'go the extra mile' to ensure artis-tic goals, has contributed to greatpopularity and unanimous a inthe industry.

A glE nce at Billboard's p 200 fpsand Tcpes testifies t phenome-non, for a dispro onately largenumber of have beenmastered at asterdisk under theausdellPdBob Ludwig. (At the timethis article was written, the numberwas 48 out of 200-nearly 25 per-cent.)

THE BOB LUDWIG STORYPart of Bob Ludwig's empathy for

artists is traceable to his early train-ing, for his natural proclivities al-ways set up a dynamic tensionbetween his fascination with tech-nology and his drive to express him-self as an artist. During high schoolhe was drawn both to engineeringand to music. In a quandary as towhich career to pursue, his musicteacher tipped the balance by en-couraging him to a career in music.He decided on a conservatory educa-tion and was accepted into the rathercompetitive program at the East-man School of Music in Rochester,NY, where he completed his ba-chelor's degree in music education.

While at Eastman, Ludwig playedprincipal trumpet in the Utica Sym-phony Orchestra and in the EastmanWind Ensemble. Simultaneously, hewas active in the recording depart-ment, recording (as he put it) "prob-ably thousands' of student recitalsand professional concerts. To makebucks on the side, he found himself inhis first audio industry job as an en-gineer for Century Records-a small"custom" label that recorded andcoordinated the 1p manufacturing ofhigh-school band recitals. At this

console may well be your last.In a world where today's hits often become tomorrow's Muzak',"

ifs refreshing to find the Ytmaha PN12800M Monitor Console.Because it has what it takes for a long stage life. Like 14 mixes.

Four matrix outputs. Meters for each primary output. Four bandvariable EQ. 20 to 40() HZ pass filter. And it's available in either 32 or40 input versions.

To improve your stage presence, it has Programmable MuteGroups. They let you switch large groups of channels on or off, silently.

The PM2800M also lets you change your act without changingconsoles. Because ifs a stage mixer that also can double as ahouse mixer.

And, it's a Yamaha. Built with a commitment to reliability that'llmake it one of the few things on stage that isn't temperamental.

For an audition, just stop by any Yamaha ProfessionalAudio dealer.

But do it soon. Because even though the PM2800M is built tolast, it tends to go quickly in the showroom.Yamaha Corporation of America. Pn fess *nal Audio Division. P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park. CA 90622-6600. In Canada.Yamaha Canada Music Ltd.. 135 Milner Aver ue. Scarborough, Ontario MIS3R1. Muzak" isa registered trademark ofMuzak.

YAMAHAEngineering hiugmatiun


point he was comfortable standingon either side of the control roomwindow garnering his formative ex-periences in playing and recording.

Speaking of that era in his life,(during the 1960s in Rochester) Lud-wig muses that "those were magicyears. I went to school with TonyLevin (bass player with King Crim-son), Lou Soloff (Blood,Sweat andTears), and Steve Gadd (ubiquitoussession drummer)." Ludwig went onto achieve an M.A. in music litera-ture. It was during that period whenhe was surely, to quote a well-wornphrase, "in the right place, at theright time."

Success was once defined as "theconjunction of preparation and op-portunity." Certainly that was thecase from this point on in Bob Lud-wig's career. When Phil Ramone wasasked to teach the first recordingworkshop at Eastman, Ludwig wasassigned to be his assistant. Ramonewas favorably impressed with youngLudwig and subsequently hired himat A&R (one of the now -legendaryNew York recording studios). Heended up working as Phil Ramone'sassistant for 1-1/2 years, duringwhich he learned the art of masteing. Again, preparation and onity coincided as he maste veralhit records working e likes ofBurt Bachrach, Dio 'arwick andBJ Thomas. (Not for a journey-man mastering : neer!)

From thatsome very pTowards th

t on, Ludwig madeent career moves.d of his stint with

A&R, Mr. ann (of the micro-phone company) had invented theSX68 which was a ground -breakingcutter head. Ludwig was one of thefirst to try it out. He knew immedi-ately that the success of any master-ing house d ded on access to thisnew technol , and asked A&R tobuy the head. ey refused. But BobLudwig had se the future and wasnot about to mis put on it.

"At that time," embers Lud-wig, "Sterling Soun . just startedup with all -European pment (in-cluding the new Neum tterhead). I knew there was nocould compete against that equiment with the stuff at A&R." Ster-ling was then a fledgling company,but Ludwig joined them, becomingtheir first employee. He, and theprincipals of the company, did "lotsand lots of records. For almost a

whole year we were the only studio to

nL-1 1969, St Sound was, as it

were, 'the o i town.' Butaft .?./- seven years, and his as-cending to vice-president o com-pany. Ludwig was forced to keanother major career move.wig's reputation had now grownproportions that alarmed his eployers at Sterling. Apparently, thefeared that if he ever left the com-pany, many of their prized clientswould follow him. A dispute aroseover a clause they wanted written into ais employment contract statingthat in the event he quit or was fired,he could not work within 200 miles ofNew York for a period of 5 years."Trey said, 'Sign it or leave,' so Ileft!", says Ludwig.

He then joined Masterdisk (a com-petitor which was oddly enouowned by the same parent comand occupied a different floorsame building). Masterdis owconsidered to be one of finestfacilities in the world.

DOING IT HTThere are several keys to Master -

disk's capturing of such a largemarket share. Ludwig's charisma iscertainly one of them, but as he per-ceptively points out, Masterdisk is a

Figure 3. Bob Lud-wig stands alongside one of hispair of DuntecSovereign 2001monitors. At theright, the muchsmaller FourierModel 8 "book-shelf" reference.

company that has decided to really do

puted state-of-the-art facility. Suchfacilities are forged not only from ac-quisitions of the most current tech-nology, though that is of greatimportance. But equally importantis an upward looking managementpolicy that allows employees to growand innovate, and to receive kudos ina team -like atmosphere of mutualupport. Masterdisk has the aura of aappy shop. That undoubtedly en-ances its reputation, and says much

about Ludwig's skills as a manager ofhuman resources.

echnically speaking, Masterdiskgiven Ludwig the latitude to ac -

ire all the equipment he needs totay a step ahead of the competition.here are six rooms at Masterdisk

which seem to be constantly active:three mastering rooms, two editingrooms and a direct -to -metal (DMM)mastering room (which communi-cates with all the other roomsthrough tie -lines). Most of the roomshave modified Neumann cuttingconsoles and Neve DTC-1 digitalconsoles as well.

Ludwig seems to be extremelyproud of the DMM room. Why? It'snot only because the DMM lathe costa quarter -of -a -million dollars andenables vinyl records to have

audiophile specs. It's because theunit is useful. Ludwig speaks of howthe DMM method of 1p mastering hasbreathed new life into the sagging 1pmarket by making things possiblewhich were previously unthinkable,such as record sides of 30 minutes ormore. While DMM was once usedstrictly for classical and elite jazz al-bums, Ludwig notes, "it is now usedfor almost every major act that wedo. A couple of years ago, when we didthe Def Lepard "Hysteria" record;the A side of that is almost 32minutes long! It would have beenphysically impossible to do withoutthis lathe. And because that recordsold like 12 million, it kind of 'brokethe dam.'

The most important tool of thetrade is to be found, however, right inBob Ludwig's personal masteringsuite. He stands next to one of his$15,000 -a -pair Duntech Sovereign2001 speakers. These time -aligned,four-way speakers, known for theirextreme low -end accuracy, are prob-ably more than 6- I/2 feet tall! The factthat Ludwig loves these speakers, re-lies on them constantly, and truststhem implicitly is evident from thisanecdote:

"On Sting's solo album there was arecorded sample. Whenever thesample finished, we kind of felt ourpants shake! On the console we useda 25 Hz hi -pass filter and itcompletely got rid of it. So you can domeaningful EQ down in the 20 Hzrange and hear it on these speakers.They are completely smooth. Thereare no horns in them. I hate horns!"

The other half of the monitoringequation is, of course, the amplifiers.Ludwig uses Cello Performance Am-plifiers which are rated at 3000 wattsper side. He credits the pristinesound quality necessary to makesonic decisions with utmost accuracy

Figure 4. The modified Neumann Analog Mastering Console. The row ofknobs at left are part of a Sontec Mastering EQ.

to these amplifie d, in case youare curious, h. ate monitorsare Fourier 8s (unfortunatelynot manu red any longer) whichserve as kshelf reference, and,of co , the normally -expectedNS -1' and Aurato nes.

SO i FINAL THOUGHTS

b Ludwig says that "recordm ng is one huge compromise."T engineer is always splitting thedi rence, between how it sounds onva ous monitors and dealing withthe limitations of the final product(C sette, vinyl, broadcast, etc.).But r since the CD emerged as adom t technology, Ludwig al-ways d what he calls "a no -holds -barred" r. This master reflectswhat a lis would be ab e to hearunder ideal ci tances. The tech-nology now mak:- possible. Thatbeing done, he then erns to the taskof realizing the medium ncl the con-

text thatlikely be pla.or a car radic). Thetice the art of COM-3down one frequency andwith anotlie4 acdingamount of compressionit takes to insure thatuniversal impact.

Ludwig conclu&s: "To erthat definition of mastering n-tioned earlier in the article), it's kewe try to get as much musicalit* aspossible, and then when the producerand myself are here in the roo nd

ing will most1 it be a disco

its to prac-turninglacing it

subtletever

we hear it over the I )udspeak= andwe say, 'Yeah, we wish ev seeycould hear it like that..." ' voicetrails off, eyes adrift, as if ad justremembered a sonic ex ence ofunearthly proportions nce youdetermine that m musical-ity, then our job mes the firstmanufactu

FIVE TIPS FROM BOB LUDWIG ON MIXING FOR RELEASEI asked Bob Ludwig to give me a list

of the five things he wished everyproducer and mixing engineer knewabout the mastering process-tips tohelp people come up with a moresuccessful product.

Here's his advice. (The parentheti-cal statements are editorial clarifica-tions).

1. BE DISCIPLINED WHEN ITCOMES TO DIGITAL

"If the project is digital-and espe-cially if it's the producer's first pro-ject in digital: it really is a differentdiscipline. His mastering budget cango sky-high if he's not disciplined.For example, they can run up a lot ofmoney to re -sequence (change theorder of songs) on a digital master.

(Since all digital editing for CDmastering is done on the 1630 com-patible format) with Sony or JVCvideo -based systems, everything hasto be done from the top."

(Only assembly style editing ispossible. Insertions are out of thequestion here. Any changes? Youhave to record it all over from thetop!) "Vari-speed is not eAsy in digi-

tal. It requires a sampling -rate con-verter that can handle vari-speed.Vari-speed should be done from themulti -track, at the mix stage for op-timum results."2. PREPARE TAPE PROP-ERLY

"Analog tape should have 1 k, 10k,15 k,100 Hz and 50 Hz-min-imum. Al k tone is sufficient for dig-ital systems. But if you are usingnon-professional digital (such asconsumer DAT machines and F-1type units) then include a 10 k tonealong with the 1 k. Since consumer(EIAJ) systems very often have onlyone A/D converter instead of two,they sample left and right putting an11 tis delay between channels-which will tend to narrow the stereoimage and reduce high frequencies inmono. You'll need a HarmoniumMundi (essentially an expensive dig-ital time -base manipulator) to com-pensate for it. With a 10 k tone theLissajous pattern on an 'scope willreveal out -of -phase information andthe need to re -time in the digitaldomain."

3. DIGITAL IS NOT FOREVERY PROJECT

"If you are working on classical oranything where you are trying to rec-reate an event that already tookplace, digital is the choice medium.For pop products, maybe not. At thistime no one has come up with a digi-tal algorithm that simulates tapesaturation (a phenomenon onlypossible on gently overloaded analogtape). The name of the game whenmaking a record is to make it asmusical as possible. Sometimes aproducer will say that a mix to analogtape sounds better than just goingstraight through the console. (That)producer should print to both analogand digital mediums. Let the analogtape "cook" for 24 hours to allowwhatever print -through is going tohappen. Then he should make ajudgement. Print -through is nevermusical, because it's non -harmonicdistortion. (Print -through occursfrequently when printing "hot" to1/2 -inch tape at 30 in./sec).

4. GET IT AS RIGHT AS YOUCAN IN THE MIX

(Don't accept a horrible mix andexpect the mastering engineering tofix it for you. Be satisfied with your

end of the bargain first.) "It; however,you know that the mastering facil-ity's compressors will work betterthan those available in the studio,wait to compress the total product.

However, since 1974 with the in-troduction of the Neumann SAL 600w/ channel cutter, there has been noneed to compress to get a master ondisc. Compression is for aestheticreasons only."

5. AVOID SPLICING A DIGI-TAL MASTER TAPE

" When bringing in a Pro-Digi orDASH digital tape, it's best to have atape with no splices and continuousSMPTE time -code on it if you wantto use it with a digital console. Splicesdisrupt SMPTE because time -codetracks are small (in these formats)and console automation becomes in-accurate. I recommend doing elec-tronic editing on anything digital."

Gauss.The World's Greatest Woofers

At Gauss, we make low fre-quency transducers, not justbass guitar speakers. And wemake them to be the best.Every Gauss loudspeaker isdesigned to perform at ratedoutput levels where othersonly survive.

Gauss woofers are the greatestbecause they're engineered tobe the best. They have the larg-est voice coil in the industry,4.125 inches. It is directlywound on a unique metalformer for maximum heat dissi-pation and efficiency. Our inno-vative double spider insuresthat the voice coil stays cen-tered under high power operat-ing conditions. Even our castaluminum frames are thickerand heavier to make themmore robust.

The result of these innovationsis a line of woofers that aresuperior to all others. Bar none.Best of all, they're built tosurvive in the real world.

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The 87th Convention of theAUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY

OCTOBER 18-21,1989NEW YORK

AESAES

for the next decade and beyond

AUDI 0

hp

hiv

New York Hilton &New York Sheraton Centre

AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY60 East 42nd Street, Room 2520. New York, New York 10165Fax: 212-682-0477 Telephone: (212) 661-8528 or (800) 541-7299 ( N America. except NY)

RANDY HOFFNER

E./J.04444 44.44)

STEREO SYNTHESIZERS AND SURROUND SOUND DECOR: NOT THEBEST OF FRIENDS

The television station engineermay soon begin to receive a new kindof call (if such a call hasn't alreadybeen received) from a viewer who islistening to stereo television audiowith a surround -sound decor anddoes not like some of what is heard.

STEREO TELEVISIONBROADCASTING

In the early days of stereo televi-sion broadcasting, just a few shortyears ago, stereo programs were theexception rather than the rule. Tele-vision broadcasters wanted to takefull advantage of this new capability,and the void left by lack o f stereo pro-gramming was filled with stereo syn-thesizers.

Opinions are divided on the aes-thetic value of these devices, but it isfair to say that the public and thebroadcasters liked the effect enoughthat very few of them have taken off-line, even though there is consider-ably more true stereo programmingavailable today.

The virtually ubiquitous stereosynthesizer is now creating problemsfor the increasing number of viewerswho use surround -sound decors tolisten to broadcast television pro-grams. Surround sound has been apart of motion picture audio for thepast decade or so, and the initial im-petus for its inclusion in televisionsound systems was the availability ofsurround -encoded movies on video-cassette.

Surround sound decoding, reducedto its simplest form, directs left -minus -right or difference signals tothe rear or surround speakers. Thesurround signals are usually delayedslightly with respect to the front sig-nals, to take advantage of the prece-dence effect to accurately locate the

front sound field. The surround en-coding process is principally one ofinsuring that the various com-ponents of the audio mix are directedto their desired destinations. Thedialogue components, for example,are required to come from the centerspeaker, in the middle of the frontsound field. It is an undesirable,indeed unpleasant, experience forthe listener to hear dialogue emanat-ing from both the front and the rearspeakers. Not only is the directionalsense incorrect, but the delay im-parted to the rear signals also createsan "outer space" effect in which dial-ogue comes from all around theroom.

Because the surround encodingand decoding process relies on phaseshifting in the left and right stereosignals, which is effective manipula-tion of the stereo difference signal, itfollows that decoders based on suchan algorithm will often serendipi-tously produce pleasing results in theabsence of any specific encoding ac-tions. In fact, those production andbroadcast practices that are ob-served to ensure mono compatibility,such as centering dialogue and pay-ing strict attention to the preserva-tion of interchannel phase integrity,contribute to successful surround de-coding of normal television stereosound tracks.

The technique by which stereo pro-grams are produced results incentered dialogue for the most part,and no L -R component is generatedfrom dialogue or other intentionallycentered sounds. Such sounds asaudience reactions, on the otherhand, are naturally rich in L -R con-tent. When a stereo audio programcontaining the foregoing elements ispassed through a surround sounddecor, dialogue comes out of the cen-

ter front speaker, left and rightsounds come out of their intendedspeakers, and ambience and otherenvironmental types of sounds areheard from the rear or surroundspeakers. This is exactly the resultsought from surround sound decod-ing, and it happens serendipitouslyquite often.

THE SURROUND SOUNDDECODER

Because so much of televisionstereo programming lends itself sowell to the surround sound decodingalgorithm, it is not surprising thatthose who have surround sound de-coders use them extensively, even inthe absence of much programmingspecifically surround encoded. Thenumber of consumers with surroundsound decoders is on the upswing.According to the available statistics,there are around a half -million sur-round decoders in the hands ofUnited States consumers.

While this is not a very large per-centage of television households, it ison the rise. Most, if not all, the majormanufacturers of television re-ceivers are either building surrounddecoders into some of their modelsnow or will be doing so in the near fu-ture. These range from the simplestapproach of simply sending L -R tothe rear speaker, to the most sophis-ticated proprietary decoding ap-proaches which enhance theinherently poor separation betweencertain of the decoded channels withsteering logic. It is safe to say that thetrend toward including surroundsound decoding on an increasinglysophisticated scale in television re-ceivers and their associated soundsystems will continue to rise. The in-crease in decoder availability will beaccompanied by an expansion in the

offering of surround encoded televi-sion programming.

So what's the problem? The prob-lem is that our old friend the stereosynthesizer can cause some un-pleasant auditory experiences for theviewer using surround sound decod-ing. This happens because the syn-thesizer generates an L -Rcomponent from all audio that itoperates on, including dialogue.This, of course, results in the sendingof dialogue all over the room in directopposition to the desired effect. Somesynthesizers recognize dialogue andlimit the amount of "spread" im-parted to it to effectively keep thedialogue narrower than the non -dial-ogue elements for stereo listeners.This feature results in less L -R beinggenerated from dialogue than is therase with synthesizers that have nofacility, but it does not totally solvethe problem.

If a stereo synthesizer with anautomatic stereo/mono recognitionfacility, even one that works perfectlyin an ideal world, is operating on pro-gramming that is subsequently

heard with surround decoding, anymono programming elements, forexample commercials, will producesynthesis, and thereby, undesirableside effects. In real -world, stereo pro-gramming centered dialogue, in theabsence of a sufficient amount of un-correlated background sound or justplain noise, will also cause the syn-thesizer to synthesize, as is now wellknown.

Given all this, it is not surprisingthat most people who listen to broad-cast television sound through sounddecoders are not fond of stereo syn-thesizers. It is also not surprisingthat many who use surround de-coders are true audiophiles, individu-als tending to spend a lot of time andmoney on their audio systems, andwho are quite vocal about anythingthey perceive as a degradation of theaudio signal.

NO GUARANTEESOf course no guarantee was ever

issued that a surround decoderwould be compatible with broadcaststereo television, but it is also true

that as the number of surround de-coders in the living rooms of con-sumers increases, the number ofirate calls to television stations aboutsynthesizers and surround decoderswill also increase.

It is not really difficult in manycases to solve this problem to thesatisfaction of the surround decoderowner. The solution is to avoid reli-ance on a stereo/mono recognitionswitch, by manually disabling thesynthesizer for blocks of true stereoprogramming, and manually ena-bling it for blocks of mono program-ming. The penalty exacted for doingso is that any mono commercials orother mono program elementswithin the stereo block will not besynthesized, but this is exactly the in-tended objective for the viewer usinga surround decoder. The reward isthat the growing audience with suchdecoders will be very pleasPd with theresult. Those in the audience wholisten in stereo and object to the falsetriggering of a synthesizer's auto-matic switch will also be pleased withthe manual switching approach. 517.

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In the early days of radio broad-casting, programming was domi-nated by elaborate dramaticpresentations, music programs fea-turing live orchestras and per-formers, news and sporting events,and all manner of entertainment,largely adapted from vaudeville -typeperformances.

Since radio is an audio medium, itwas seized by creative producers asan opportunity to create a "theater ofthe mind." Unlike film, or even livepresentations, radio did not requirelavish visual displays or expensivescenery and props. To develop ascene or set a mood, production spe-cialists used sound effects and music.

In the early days, sound effectswere not available on pre-recordedCDs, records, or tapes; they had to begenerated live at each broadcast.With experience, radio broadcastersdevised techniques to create soundsthat were inexpensive, better -suitedto use inside a studio, and often cameacross to listeners better than the ac-tual sounds themselves.

It is impractical, for instance, torun a locomotive past a mic on cue, orto route a babbling brook through astudio. Broadcasters had to come upwith alternate methods. A gunshotmerely sounds like a sharp "whap"when picked up by a mic, so even ef-fects that could be produced by natu-ral means where often unacceptable.

Here are a few ideas to get youstarted on creating realistic -sound-ing studio noises that can be used to

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simulate natural sound effects incommercials and radio drama. Someare old standbys, and others are onesI've stumbled across (sometimes lit-erally) in my quest for imaginativescenarios.FIRE:

Crumple cellophane from a ciga-rette pack in front of the mic. Trydiffering degrees ofcellophane-man-gling and distances from the mic tosuggest the proper magnitude of theblaze.SMASHING WOOD:

Step on, tear apart, or squashwooden berry boxes, bushel baskets,or fruit crates.GAME SHOW "CORRECT AN-SWER" CHIME:

Many modern elevators emitpleasant "dings" when they stop atyour floor. Also, try the EmergencyStop buzzer as a "wrong answer"razz. (Warn building managersbefore you try this one.)FISTFIGHT:

This one requires a bit of painfulself-sacrifice (go ahead, you can takeit!). Bop yourself on the insides ofyour forearms with your fists. Or, forthose of a more delicate constitution,clobber a whole watermelon.WALKING IN FALLENLEAVES:

Let your fingers do the walkingthrough a tabletop covered with adeep layer of corn flakes. Scuffle asdesired.DIGGING HOLE:

Scoop your corn flakes into a largebowl, and "shovel" with a cuppedhand or spatula.ARROW:

Use the palm ofyour hand or a veryheavy stack of books to hold a rulerdown on a table with several inchessticking out beyond the edge.Sharply "strum" the ruler verticallydownward with your thumb. To cre-ate a more comical "boing", adjustthe length of the overhanging lengthof ruler. Also, try sliding the rulerfarther onto or off of the tabletop inmid-boing.


SHAVING:Scrape a fingernail acrass your

palm in continuous light scratchingmotions of varying rhythms, with aquick flick at the end of each stroke.

CAR CRASH:Somewhat firmly pack a heavy-

duty corrugated cardboard box withlarge shards of broken glass, books,pots and pans, and other assortedjunk. Drop it on the floor or slide itinto a wall to simulate a simple colli-sion; tumble it down a flight of stairsto suggest a plunge down a cliff.

APPLAUSE:There are two standard ways to

simulate a large group of people ap-plauding:

1) Rather than beating hands to-gether, you can double the size of a"crowd" by enlisting a host of accom-plices to clap their hands against op-posite biceps simultaneously.

2) Use the common TV studio -audience gimmick of havin g the folksapplaud faster than normal. The re-sulting effect is that of a horde 3-4times the size of the number o f peopleactually present.

SPACESHIP:Hold a length of plastic vacuum

cleaner hose in one hand and whirl itover your head helicopter -style. Thisproduces a bizarre howling soundthat you can adjust by varying thespeed you twirl it.

The following techniques may beapplicable now that the Halloweenseason is upon us. Warning: these aredefinitely not for the faint of heart!

GUILLOTINE:Run a metal ruler swiftly along the

edge of a wooden desk, and at the mo-ment of truth, grab your trusty BoyScout hatchet and deftly chop anearby cabbage in two. Follow by im-mediately dropping another cabbageinto a shredded paper -lined plasticwastebasket.

THE RACK:Crack your knuckles close to the

mic, while leaningslowly back in thatcreaky old office chair.

BONES BREAKING:Grab a nutcracker, a handful of

walnuts, and get up next to the mic.

BODY FALLING ON FLOOR:

I've often used a laundry bag orlarge mail sack full of sneakers,phonebooks, and other heavy, non-rigid items, dropped from variousheights above the floor. Experiment.Don't deign to take a dive yourself;the only way to sound convincing is todrop from a considerable height andland on your back. Not recom-mended.

This brief list should get youstarted. Experiment with varioustape recording/playback speeds,backward tape effects, and otherelectromechanical techniques. You'llprobably discover a few new soundsof your own! I'd like to continue thislist by adding ideas from readers.Send me your own personal discover-ies or suggestions in care of db, and ifyour idea is used, you'll be givencredit in this column. 71:

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STEVE LANGSTAFF

db Visits Boston

n the fifth floor of theScotch 'n Sirloin buildingon North WashingtonStreet sits the largestaudio recording facility in

Boston-Soundtrack.The city styles itself as the hub of

many things, but it is rightly knownas a fertile hotbed for music, as theheadquarters of several major adver-tising agencies, and as a center ofhigh technology Over the pasttwenty years, sound productionfacilities in this town that reach forrecord label work have proliferatedboldly, if not ingenuously, engagingthe extremes of competition preva-lent in any media metropolis.

In the past decade or so, Boston hasalso risen to the challenge and oppor-tunities in post production for visualmedia. There, too, competition hasbecome fierce, but the investment re-quired has tended to exclude fromthe stakes small operators such asthose who have worried and deci-mated the profit margins of studiosspecializing in popular music, in therock and roll dream.

Soundtrack began humbly, sometwelve years ago. Despite ambitionsbred of the music business giddinessof those times, it chose not to enterthat seductive fray. The Boston endof Soundtrack now features a staff ofthirty, two twenty-four track rooms,one of which is equipped with a 40 -channel SSL 6000 and a Synclavierwith four hours of Direct -to -Disc re-cording capability. There are foureight -track rooms, including as onetheir Lexicon Opus system. A littleover three years ago they expandedinto the New York market, setting upsix rooms, four of which are 56 -chan-nel, 48 -track SSL. Soundtrack isunique, at the very least in this area,

SOUNDTRACK

in that it offers three generations ofaudio processing technology for mixto picture: One room is equippedwith Alpha Audio's Boss controller,Lynx, one -inch- and three -quarter -

inch video, an Otari 24 -track, a Har-rison MR -4 console, plus Performer,Korg M1R, Yamaha DMP-7, etce-tera-technology that was state-of-the-art through the mid -to -late1980's. Another room features theSSL 6000 and a Synclavier withDirect -to -Disc, which approach hasjust recently come into its own. Andthe third is a Lexicon Opus room, atthe cutting edge of workstation capa-bility.

SOUNDTRACK'S CREATIVEDIRECTOR

I visited with John Kiehl, the amia-ble Creative Director of Soundtrack,at the end ofJune. Rob Cavicchio, thestudio's ownei was busy in NewYork:

JK: I met Rob in 1971. I was still inschool. Upon graduating in 1973, Ijoined one of the bands he was book-ing. Rob was an astute businessmanand also something of an undirectedsoul. He comes from a musicalfamily. He knew he wanted to be inthe recording business, because itseemed the most sane part of themusic world. So he said John, stickwith me. We are going to get into re-cording. I'm not sure how we aregoing to do it, but we'll figure thatout.

It didn't take him long to realizethat the only people in town withboth consistent budgets and needswere the ad agencies. Being musici-ans, that meant jingles to us. Sojingles we did, for two or three years,then added voice work.

When we moved to WashingtonStreet, our intention, believe it ornot, was to build a four -track roomfor jingles, and to work with the big-ger music studios in town. What wesold was service. Our clients hadlittle choice back then. They used oneor two places in town, joints theyoften found ornery. We had few pre-conceptions, except that the cus-tomer is always right and his needsare what you deliver. So that's whatwe built our business on.

Eventually, it was one hand wash-ing the other. We would meet a clientthrough voice work and he'd learnthat we did jingles, or we would dojingles for somebody who would dis-cover that we could do all his postproduction work. The BostonGlobe's jingle led to doing all theirdaily stuff. Of course we made tentimes as much money on the dailystuff as on the jingles.

(Music was always and still is im-portant to Rob and me. That's whowe were, creative people. The rockthing never made sense to us, so wenever got into it. We didn't need theaggravation.)

Each of the three generations ofpost technology rooms has its ownspecialist. John and I visited the Syn-clavier room first, then moved to the24 -track analog, Boss lock -to -oneinch video suite, where we were ableto talk in the adjacent machine room.

SL: When you folks started out,mixing sound to image was differentfrom your current procedures.

JK: When I started, twelve yearsago, the BTX people brought in thisbox and said, "This is your future.This is mix -to -picture. This islockup."

24TR

Amps

Boss

1"

video

3/4"

video'/2"

video

MACHINEROOM

Tielines

HALLWAY

2TRMix

down

Boss

Console

Floor

podium

STUDIO

Figure 1. Floor plan of the Lockup Room.

SL: I recall some early reliabilityproblems.

JK: There wasn't much choiceback then. BTX seemed to be comingat it from the rock and roll studiomentality. They knew the way wethought about audio. They were try-ing to bring the video people over tous. So we got a BTX as a beta test site,and we learned. But it was painful.You knew instead of a five minutesetup it was a two hour setup, as youtrouble -shot ground loops, un-matched SMPTE codes.

SL: Do you find that the Lynxworks fairly well?

JK: Plug it in and it runs. Theheadaches and the horror show aregone. The client has' is now prettywell educated to the process. Theyknow what they are going to run into,

they know that there is a little bit ofstart time as the machines settledown.

THE CHANGING ENGINEER

JK: What is interesting now is theevolution of the engineer's contribu-tion. Torn Love, here in theBoss/Lynx one inch/twenty four -track lockup room, doesn't comefrom a musical background, but BillBookheim in the Synclavier room is amusician. As you go around to theother post studios in town, I thinkyou're going to find that their audiopeople are musicians. What thesefacilities are marketing now, besidesthe ability to drop in a sound effect, isknowledge about samplers, trans-posing , synthesizers, and so on.

Figure 2. The Opus Room. It measures Figure 3. The Blue Room.18 by 12 feet

OPUS

w0

BOOTH

PHONEBOOTH

ALCOVE

The modern post engineer is acreative audio specialist. You don'twant just an engineer anymore, youwant a guy who sees the whole pic-ture at a conceptual level and can tellyou "OK, I'll throw in what yourasking me to throw in, but have youthought about this issue?"

SL: Your engineers each work asingle room?

JK: Yes. Tom can work in here fast.To think through all these levels onestep at a time would take me an hourto set up. It takes him only minutes.

SL: How long did it take Tom to getproficient at it?

JK: I would say it took us, as a facil-ity, with Tom being the dedicated guyin this room, around six months. Itdidn't hurt that the Alpha Audio Brigspeople came along just in time.

STUDIO

2TRmix

down

A800

Console48CH SS6-6000

Producers Desk

Couch

Figure 4. Freelance engineer Jonathan Wiener at the console in the BlueRoom.

SL: I see you're not working fromthe one -inch video at the moment.

JK: One inch is real overkill. But inthe old days you would work on anaudio track, the music bed, or thefinished track, and ship it acrosstown to somebody else who might notcare about audio. Then you'd hearyour spot on the air and it would bedistorted, or too low or too hot. Andyou'd say, wait a minute! My reputa-tion's at stake here.

We went to one -inch machines toget control of that step. We're able totell the client, "Bring your one -inchover. We'll strike our own 3/4 -inchdub." If the client brings in the one -

inch and a 4/4 that they've strucksomewhere else, they might not getthe SMPTE right. Slight capstan -

speed variations can also be problem-atic. We learned the hard way that,even though this is all supposed to bestandard, it isn't necessarily, in prac-tice. Better to deal with the equip-ment on its terms than to say itshouldn't be that way.

In New York, we started out withtwo or three sets of Lynx controllergeai figuring we could just movethem from room to room, as needed.It never worked. Ground problems,

a)co and so on. So every room has its owna),-- Lynx units, all settled down. We can`cr, guarantee that what is supposed to-8 happen actually happens.8 The newest addition to the facility-z--- is the room dedicated to the Lexicon

E.o Opus, which was our next stop.

(1) JK: One of the interesting thingsatiL about tapeless audio is that you havein eliminated all those headaches aboutxi capstan and speed control, it's now

just clock sync, and those are issuesTrCV for which computers are the killer.

This Opus has two hours of stereo,but it can go up to six, eight, whateveryou want. They seem to have put tobed the issue of sufficient time for aproject.

LOADING SOURCEMATERIAL

JK: What has not been put to bed,and it's a real problem that I hear fewpeople talk about, is loading sourcematerial in. At best, these systemsseem to work in twice real time. For atwenty -minute audio/visual, or aforty -minute film, it takes a signifi-cant time to load your audio backin-unlike pulling a two-inch reel offthe shell; throwing it on a deck, re-winding it, and we're ready to go.We're used to booking sessions ten totwelve, twelve to two, two to six. If wetell the client that we're going to billthem extra half hours at either end oftheir session to allow for this, theclient is going to say "Wait a minute!Give me that eight -track room; I'mjust doing voice and a music bed."

There can also be problems in con-firming backups. We have found thatmany times, after backing some-thing up and loading it back in to justcheck it, that the tapes fail with no in-dication of failure while we weredoing the back up. What am I sup-posed to do, discover that problemthree months later when the clientcomes back?

Both New England Digital andLexicon are working on improvingthat bug. Reliability is improving.Nevertheless, we archive everythinganalog as well as digital to cover our-selves. Next year we might be quitecontent with the digital machines inthat respect.

In contrast to the Synclavier, theOpus integrates the recording me-dium with a console. I understandthat the Synclavier people are build-ing a console to work with theirstand-alone tapeless environment.Meanwhile, howevei the Opusdoesn't have automation, so it al-most makes moot the question ofhaving a console. If you had a studiothese days, would you buy any con-sole that didn't have automation onit? No. Lexicon is promising auto-mation by the fall.

SL: Upgradable?JK: It will have to be upgradable.

I'm pretty sure automation tookthem by surprise. They had no ideawhat an absolute must it is in theaudio world these days.

The Opus has ninety-nine concep-tual tracks, of which any eight youcan call up and work on. You use sub -mixes. For instance, we can call upseven tracks of birds, create a submixof bird ambience, then call up dialogtracks and do the same. And so on.Then, finally, we work with the sub-

mixes. What we really want is an au-tomated mix without the need forsubbing, so that we can work off-line,so to speak.

The Synclavier's strength is in thedatabasing of audio elements. It'svery sexy. You just go out and recordall these little noises that the clienthas brought in, or that you're liftingoff sound effects libraries, orwhatever. You scoop them up, youcan trim them up quickly, it's allpoint and shoot, scrub. Meanwhilethe machine automatically gives thesegment a name that you can over-ride.

SL: How useful do you find thevisual display of segments?

JK: We tend to do it the old way: byear. We scrub and listen for modula-tion, end of modulation, and mark it.Nothing is destructive. Opus haswhat are called Safe Segments.When you put things in, you createsafe segments that are locked.Everything else is just a duplicate ofthat, so to speak. But the duplicatesdon't take up more memory. The du-plicate is just a new set of pointers towhere you begin and end play backfrom that Safe Segment.

I think the fact that audio peoplehave spent years learning to use theirears took these computer people bysurprise. Good audio engineers don'tneed visual confirmation. Just give

them a tool like a scrub wheel, that'sall they need. Another nice feature inthe Opus is its cross -fade editing.

SL: You clearly have a range of ap-proaches to post production covered.

MIX -TO -PICTURE

JK: As we grew, it became impera-tive that all our rooms have mix -to -picture capabilities. It's no longer aspeciality of one room. But it's easy toget very chauvinistic about doing itthe new way, when some old downand dirty ways are all that's calledfor.The client is not buying into thisbecause of the experience, he wantsto get out of here.

SL: He wants product, he doesn'tnecessarily want to learn the sys-tems.

JK: Right. You know, we thoughtour Synclavier clients were going tobe the high -end people, the peoplefrom the big agencies, who have beenworking on a spot with a $150,000budget for the last three months.Now is their final audio day. Theyhave got all day booked, and aregoing to spend a ridiculous sum ofmoney to do what could be done inforty-five minutes. Because there aregoing to be twelve chiefs and no Indi-ans, we'll have to accommodateeverybody's little whim over thecourse of the day. Tempers are goingto flair. We thought that the clientwas going to want the Synclavier, be-cause anything less wasn't goodenough for his project.

In fact, even though we were rightto some extent, the people who arereally buying into this technology arethe people from the retail stores, likethe Star Market and Stop and Shop,who do a job every day. The BostonGlobe comes here daily for a radiospot. If we can get them done in tenminutes instead of twenty minutesor forty-five, great.

I'm really intrigued that it's thelow -end guy, just doing business asusual, who wants to use this equip-ment. It makes his life morepleasant. I have been doing this fortwelve years, and have grown not toenjoy non -music audio production.There've been many reasons, butthis new technology has eliminatedthem all. You can work as fast as yourmind can possibly handle.

SL: At considerable cost.

JK: OK A problem in every aspectof music media is that, though it's al-ways been a big commitment to getinto this business, it used to be moregenerally rewarding.

SL: The rate structure has gottenso crazy, in music studios especially.

JK: No one is doing well, but thoseof us who know we are not doing wellare the old guys who are looking for-ward to retiring from the business.The young guys are just ecstatic thatthey can be doing what they want todo, and they can make an extra fivehundred bucks per month or a thou-sand bucks. They don't quite realizethat they're not really running a bus-iness.

SL: The concept of return on in-vestment separates the people thatare playing from the people who areactually doing business. In 1970, onestudio in Boston offered four -trackaudio at sixty five dollars an hour.Now you can get twenty-four trackfor thirty, or less.

JK: We are constantly figuring outhow to keep ahead. Not everybody isgoing to be able to buy an Opus Sys-tem. So the little guy on the block isgoing to have his Macintosh andSound Designer tools. Currentlythat's a two -track format. But nextyear it will be eight tracks. What isthe difference between that and this?None, except that my machine willwork a little better; it will be a littlemore rugged, it will be faster. I've gotto keep buying into the difference thehigh -end makes.

Both Synclavier and these peoplenow can talk digitally to another.

Not the labeling information, butyou can port track elements. We'll goto the Synclaviei grab stuff on DAT,then bring it in here and throw it intothe Opus digitally. I'm real excitedabout this.

One of my busiest clients is a Bos-ton -based global information com-pany. They are a twenty-nine nationcompany, and everything they do hasto be in four languages. They are justgoing crazy with work. And this kindof thing is perfect for it. To be able todo a video, and then, on anothertrack, do the French, Italian, and theGerman, and slip and slide aroundbecause all those languages takedifferent amounts of time to saywhat usually is quickest in English.That's what I see this kind of equip-ment just being a killer at.

INFOMERCIALSJK: In the corporate world, video is

replacing paper right and left, withinfomercials. Everyone would preferto have information spoon feed tothem. Some companies have closed-circuit TV running infomercials allday. They need this kind of produc-tion and ability. And they are going toneed the young guy who knows howto run it.

SL: How do you think that will af-fect Soundtrack?

JK: Definitely adversely, but Ithink there will always be room for usbecause we will always be better.

SL: They will probably be morespecialized.

JK: We are always doing every-thing under the sun, so we are alwaysable to have a slightly higher visionabout what this job needs.

SL: What you're talking about is aparticular niche of corporate needs,as opposed to, say, the creativeaspects of advertising. They prob-ably still would not deal with ads.

JK: But that corporate thing isall the growth is going to be in

the next ten years. Anybody who is inthis business should be lassoing theircorporate neighbors. The videohouses already know about this, be-cause corporate video is what haskept them alive. But I think they maystart suffering, because video has be-come so big that the corporationsneed to put it in-house.

SL: Do you still do straight musicprojects after hours?

JK: Yes. Anybody who comes to usand says John, I've got a client. Iwould love to work here. What canwe work out? If I know you're goingto be here every hour, and you're tel-ling me that these people are gentle-men, and you just need myequipment, of course we will workout something.

I come in here and tread waterfrom nine to five, and as soon as thisplace cools down, I've got three ar-tists I'm working with, a Jazz artist,an R&B artist and a rock artist.

SL: So you're still pursuing music?JK: Yes. Though Soundtrack has

yet to break the record deal nut. Wehaven't signed a single artist. How-evei on another level, Critique Re-cords are starting to use us a lot. Thereason they stayed away from usbefore is because they thought we

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co

Figure 5. Soundtrack's John Kiehl standing and mix engineer John Nagyat the Lockup Room console.

weren't interested. Now they'recoming in.

We have weaknesses and we havestrengths. I'm not interest in fixingall my weaknesses, because it wouldcost too much. And whatever myweakness remains, you can solvethat across town, then come backand take advantage of our strengths.So go ahead and do that.

SL: Do you do most of the non-commercial music at night?

JK:Yes.

SL: How do commercial music andpost rates compare?

JK: Music to sound track meansour jingle business. When we aredoing music we charge New Yorkrates, two hundred and sixty bucksan hour. Our feeling is that you havechosen Soundtrack. And at the sametime, if one of my clients says John,I've only got two thousand dollars todo this, no problem. I'm able to somehow work that out.

Unlike New York, we have neverreally priced ourselves on how muchthe room is worth for an hour. Inworking out a budget, we say this isgoing to be six hours of studio time,that's two hundred and fifty bucksan hour roughly. That is what jinglerates are in New York, and we figureif you're not going choose Sound-track, you will probably go to NewYork or LA, or one of the big jinglehouses. If that wasn't your intentionand you're going to go to one of thesmaller jingles houses in town, then

clearly you're on another financiallevel.

SL: So for post, what are the rates?JK: Our post rate is one hundred

sixty an hour. In all three rooms.There's only so little you can chargefor this service, because you have somuch invested in it. What you reallywant to sell is the surgeon, not theoperating room.

SL: That sounds pretty low, actu-ally.

JK: Video houses charge a lotmore, sometimes. Our client is notgoing to go for a huge premium towork with this technology. But Iknow what's going to happen. I knowthat kids across town are going to goout and buy a WaveFrame for fortygrand, and sell it at thirty-five anhour. And if they do just a halfway de-cent job I got Bill Bookheim from agroup of fouryoung Berldee kids whoeach pooled about ten grand andbought an incredible MIDI pit.

SOME BACKGROUNDSL: How long has Bill been with

you.

JK: A year. He and his partnerswould come over every few months,telling me about this client and thatclient, and then they'd say but John,we're not getting anywhere. Wewant the big accounts. My responsewas, if I had had what you have in myfirst year of business, I would havebeen ecstatic. I couldn't make themsee that no one is goingto give you thebig account. Forget that. What you

need is to get in bed with little agen-cies, little guys who will become thebig accounts over ten years. That'swhat I did.

I got involved in this business whenthe recession was in full swing. Therewas a reason not to go to New York allof a sudden. People were forced tolook to home for suppliers. So I justproved myself. They weren't littleagencies at the time, even then, butstill they weren't super -sophisti-cated production -wise, the Hum-phrey-Brownings and the Hill -Holidays and the Cabots and the Ar-nolds. I proved myself while theydeveloped the confidence that theyreally could do this themselves, thatthey didn't need some big namedirector in New York putting thestamp of approval on their creativeideas. After all, there are only a fewways to put up a microphone. Andhow deep can a deep male voice go?You don't need that guy in New York.There are three or four men in thistown who have that sound.

Fortunately, we came along at atime when the economy forcedpeople to look closer to home. Weproved ourselves and grew that way.But to this day we still don't get in-vited on the big stuff. They still go toNew York.

SL: How is the New York facilitydoing?

JK: Very well. But when you saymusic in New York, you're talking re-cord product, Debbie Gibson and soforth. That is weird for us. We havefour rooms there with giant SSL con-soles. Three of the rooms are forty-eight track Otaris. One has a pair ofSony twenty-four track digital ma-chines. What's weird is that we arenot involved with what goes on in theroom at all. Personally, it seems wemight as well be in the restaurantbusiness.

SL: So you're just renting outspace?

JK: Right. That's so different forus. For us, our facility was our work-station. Rates are so competitivedown there. I think our rate for musicin New York is $1,400 for a twelvehour block. A long way from $260 anhour. And, quite honestly, that's a ne-gotiable rate.

SL: Why did you folks decide to setup there?

JK: Personal ego gratification. Itwas always our goal to be record pro-ducers when we started out.

SL: So you were aiming at the re-cord thing specifically, or was it ex-pansion?

JK: We got real comfortable withwhat had happened to us in Boston,which we just fell into. And we weresmart enough to recognize that infact a big part of audio is not music.We thought, let's go down to NewYork and do the same thing. Let's beone of the few in New York that doesmusic and non -music. To some ex-tent we are very happy with whatSoundtrack -New York is. It's one ofthe select studios that the big jinglehouses use when they need a jingle.Many of them create the product outof their living rooms, nowadays.

Our bread and butter in the BigApple is the re -mix guy, the youngtwenty -four -year -old who was a DJlast month. All of a sudden, he's beenentrusted with a Grace Jones re -mixbecause she has a hit. And they don'ttrust the album producer to do the re -mix, because what does he knowabout being in dance clubs? So theygive it to this young kid. He gets acouple of grand and we make acouple of grand and everybody'shappy.

After three years, he's twenty-eight or thirty, and he's now in chargeof Grace's whole album. So he comesto us. He loves working with us, be-cause we worked with him. It's thesame thing I tried to teach theseyoung kids up here in Boston. Youstart humbly, and it takes time.

SL: You grow with your clients.JK: New York definitely has three

things going. The esoteric recordthing, which we have little to do withcreatively. Our own little jingle busi-ness, which has really never taken offbecause we just haven't had the man-power to pursue it or the energy toput up with the bull that surrounds it.And we have our non -music mix topicture stuff. We have a Synclavierroom, we have a room with Lynxunits and an automated Sony con-sole, and we have a young guy fromUniversal in Chicago, who has doneeverything under the sun. He knewhe didn't want to be a music engineerand knew he loved to do this kind ofwork.

Again, a main reason you wouldcome to Soundtrack here is becauseyou like working with one of our

people. It's been harder to get thatconcept working in New York. Theywant to know that your specialty isrecording live drums, or your spe-cialty is recording drum machine, oryour specialty is playing the acousticguitar.

THE COUNTRY CLUB

JK: We call this the country club.Any of our staff who have workeddown in New York can't believe howrelaxed it is here. No one is in a rush.Nobody is putting pressure on us. Onthe other hand, the New York staffstill doesn't understand the ad man,still doesn't understand his needs orhow you mess up. You don't mess upby distorting the tape. That's never amess up in the ad world. You mess upby typing his name wrong on thelabel. You mess up by not getting thedub to the radio station at the settime.

We've already made all those mis-takes, and have been slapped aroundup here for ten years. When we makethe mistakes now, we know them,and we scurry and pick up. In NewYork they don't see themselvesmaking a mistake. But then again, inNew York, their machines are alwaysaligned. The two-inch in every roomhas virgin tape on it, with tones al-ready printed. You're never going tofind that here.

SL: A matter of form.

JK: Totally. So Rob and I takepleasure in seeing the two versions.We try to make one affect the other.But at some point, there are toomany people to push in a new direc-tion.

JK: Many of the other places herethatyou might be talking to are videohouses with a captive audience. Theyalready got the guy for thirty grand,so why not finish the job off? Whensomeone brings a job over here Iknow they're choosing us becausethey feel we are a little more dedi-cated to the audio issues.

Maybe that means we have a betterlibrary, or maybe they know that ifthey suddenly feel the need for a syn-thesizer zip or zap, that I am here, orBill's here, and we can whip it off. Sowhen it comes to mix -to -picture, oneof the things that makes us differentis the concept of having in-housemusicians. And people come here be-cause we work with them.

The young guy reading this articlewho dreams about getting into thebusiness, or the guy who has been inthe business five years or three, butstill hasn't flourished, has to tuneinto the fact that no matter where hethought he was going, that's prob-ably not where the business isheaded. If he starts tuning into whatis really going on, he'll start flourish-ing like crazy. You're going to have tohelp the corporate client understandhis needs, and that you're the answerto his needs, a bit like the Music Man.

There's a real need, and it's grow-ing by leaps and bounds. Those of uswho have been fortunate enough towork with these people are goingafter it. The digital work station is in-credibly elegant. It's something youcan get into inexpensively at thesmall end. There's a client base thatonly needs that lower level of sophis-tication. Over time, you can growalong with your client to largerthings.

The awards festooning, Sound-track's corridors are a quiet buthardly mute testimony to the successof their philosophy.

EQUIPMENT

Lock RoomConsole: Harrison MR4

24 -track: Otari MTR90Mixdown: Studer A810 with centertrack time code

Lock: Boss Controllei LYNX syn-cronizers for 1 -in. or 3/4 -in. video

Outbound: SPX 90, BBE 822, (2) dbx165A, Ashley parametric EQ, Orbande-esserVideo: Sony BVH 1100A, JVC 3/4 -in8250, Sony 4/4 U-matic V2 VHS

Monitors and Amps: Bryston 4B,Urei 309

Blue Room

Console: SSL series 6000 with totalrecall

24 track: Studer A800

Digital Workstation: Synclavier Post -Pro and synthesize4 16 track D -T -D,12 -in. laser disc, 24 sampled voices, 8FM voices

Mix: Mag dubbe4 DAT Sony 4500,Otari MTR 10 2 TR

0co

Outboard: Lexicon 480, PCM 70,SPX 90, Harmonizer H3000, Rev 7,(2) LXP-1, PCM 41, Prime time, BBE822

Lock: LYNX syncronizers for 3/4 -in.video

Video: JVC 3/4 -in. model 8200

The newest arrival on the mediascene in Boston is Editel. Well-known around the country, Editelhas major operations in New York,San Francisco, Chicago, and Los An-geles. Editel's owne4 Scanline,bought the Century III productionfacilities in Kenmore Square lastyear, moving in in October. Construc-tion is still in progress in their BeaconStreet building, as they revise andimprove the setup. Buying out a longsuccessful studio complex meantthat they would be up and runn ing al-most immediately, with an excellentstaff already in place. Don Berman,president of Editel-Boston, ex-plained some of the attractionsduring our first meeting:

"When Scanline tries to grow, theylook for a complementary facility.They don't want to simply recreatewhat they have. One of the things wesaw in Century In is Digital Images,a national graphics company thatdoes television IDs in addition to thepost business. Another was theaudio. Ross Cibella (Century III'sowner and founder) had a big inter-est in audio. In some of our otherfacilities, we found that audio was agrowing area while graphics worksystem capabilities were starting tolevel off. Mix-to-pix and custom -de-signed music up -front was becomingcritical."

FULL TIME COMPOSER

"A third thing we liked about thisoperation was the presence ofa full-time composer, a staff position themarket is driving us to include. Manycomposers I've talked to like sittingin front of real instruments, andnever dreamed that they'd be sittingin a digital room, able to call up allthese sounds. Once they get in there,the things that come out are just in-credible. And the insistence on realinstruments goes away. They havethe freedom to compose in acompletely different environment,from a different perspective, andhave complete access to everything.

Monitor and Amps: Bryston 4Bs,UREI 813B, Yamaha NS10, TannoyPBM 6.5

OPUSDigital workstation: Opus

EDITEL BOSTONIt's probably the fastest -growingarea in our organization.

"I think some people look at audioas a low ticket. But clients don't focuson that in a post facility, because thefilm -to -tape chain is $600 an hourand an edit suite could run as muchas $900 an hou4 depending on all thebells and whistles you add on. Yet anaudio suite is an audio suite. We havesome pretty high -end equipment,but for us the audio department is re-ally people -driven, and that's whyclients come to us.

"I would say that one-third of ourbusiness is post -related, one third isgraphics -related, and one-third of itis audio only. In the audio depart-ment, total projected annual re-venues are about $800,000.

Our San Francisco operation tooka close look at what's going on here,and put in similar rooms. New York isnow looking at it. I don't think ifyou're a post facility, you can open uptomorrow as a music facility. Buthere, audio was already an estab-lished business."

The audio portion of Editel-Bos-ton's facility currently includes a 24 -track mix -to -picture room; a libraryspace for clients who need to screenvoice talents, stock music, or soundeffects; an 8 -track studio for radioproduction and voice work; plus thespace in which, two days later, I hadthe opportunity to talk at length withMike Szakmeiste4 the head of audio,and engineer Bob Reardon.

The music production room wherewe met is small, but packed withgear. Used primarily for music com-position -to -picture, and as a pre -composing workstation for jingles, itlocks up to all the rest of the studios.We spoke about the exploitation ofthis equipment, their operationalphilosophy, and their feelings aboutthe newer technologies.

BR: The DMP-7s offer more pro-gramming than an SSL, because youcan automate the EQ and sends inreal time. They have some nifty

Mixdown: DAT Sony 4500, OtariMTR 10

Video: 3/4 -in. (playback only) PB5000Sony

Monitor and amp: Yamaha P2075,Urei 809

Reverb: Lexicon 480L

things, such as simultaneous positiveand negative variations of a parame-ter. For instance, they can be used todo doppler shifts. Or you can couplethe pan movement as a positive var-iation, and have the negative varia-tion be a mix of reverb. You'll achievesomething that moves across andgets closer.

MS: Or a crossfade in one motion,one going down, one up; two differ-ent reverb parameters, for instance.Instead of Total Rerall, we have areset of everything. It's even a littlebeyond the Harrison Series 10 or Tri-dent Di -An. All the reverb and EQparameters are continuously varia-ble, automated, and glitch -free.

SL: Does this program only run onAtari?

BR: There is a version coming outfor the Macintosh.

MS: Not available yet.

SL: Are there any problems?

BR: With the Mac, the Atari, theIBM, and different brands of boxeslike the Akai S-1000 and MIDI, get-ting samples from your editing en-vironment to the sampler storagegets a little funny at times, given thatsome stuff is SCSI, some stuff is RS -422.

MS: You need to have a separatecomputer for the automation.There's a lot of continuous controllerinformation. With all the controllersand the MIDI datastream, you justhave to separate some of the tasksonto different computers. Other-wise, you could go nuts.

BR: We were previously doing theconsole automation in Performer3.0, along with the music sequences,but it binds up. The new Performerhas some great features, though. Youcan edit velocities on final screen,draw a controller, and assignswitches that are not defined controlnumbers of the MIDI spec. The nameof the game is getting all these boxesto talk to each other.

MS: You need to arrive at a stand-ard configuration, and then becomeaccustomed to it and make sure thatit works. That's why we have 32voices of Alesis drums, so that themapping stays the same all the time.No matter what file you call up,you've got the right percussion there,you've got everything. If you messaround with pad and voice assign-ments, from file to file, then youwon't have a reset, which is a mainfeature of this room; instant totalreset of mix, EQ, reverb, voice as-signments, everything. (Call up afile, press a button. It configureseverything, and you're ready to run.)

The Trident Di -An is a definitivemulti -track console, but what aboutall your outboard stuff? If a client isdoing film -to -tape transfer and theywant to stop over to check the pro-gress on the audio and make a fewsuggestions, you can try some things.Then the next client comes in a fewminutes later, and you can go rightback to where you left off on theirproject. In an environment whereyou have a number of projects goingon at the same time, you don't wantto waste that time. That's why totalreset is key, beautiful.

SL: What about workstations?MS: Well, the WaveFrame is a

workstation, but it's not a disc re-corder at this point. I'm not sure thatwe want it. It seems that the biggestproblem is the load time. Some-thing's got to be done about storingand retrieving the data faster.Another consideration is that of theweakest link. In the case of some-thing that's all cut on film, syncsounds are cut with the pictures andperhaps overlapped or checker -boarded, then down -loaded into yourAMS AudioFile. Now we've got a per-fect digital recording of a junky magtrack. We add other elements, andthen lay the result back to a not -so -great one -inch video audio track, andthat gets dubbed onto a one -inch dubmaster which is then dubbed furtheronto a bunch of VHS tapes.

SL: Generation loss s.MS: Right. You need a good per-

spective on your overall audio qu-ality, in the long run. Workstationsare fine, but expensive. And that costis transferred to the client. I was justtrying to point out a potential flaw inthe whole idea of staying digital.You're only digital in that one step. If,

Figure 6. Editel's 24 -track mix-to-pix room. (Photo by John Garrett.)

instead of an AudioFile, we used 30in./sec. 24 -track, the difference is de-finitely going to be negligible.

SL: The processing, scrubbing,and timing features in workstationsare mighty attractive, though, forsome kinds of work.

MS: Right. In a video project, theissues are accessibility, speed andcreative flexibility. There are thingsthat you couldn't do any other way.That is really what should be lookedat. Longer format stuff won't exploitthe workstation optimally unless youhave the original elements there any-way. There's little that can't be donewith a high-powered, tape -basedediting system such as our CMX orBoss. I see a workstation being moresensibly used in shorter durationprojects: spot work and advertising,where everything is MOS, and you'rebuilding from scratch. Everything isclean.

You can get all your elements inthere and move them around faster.But you still have to load everythingin from, most often, tape. The ele-ments come in on tape. In theamount of time it takes to feed every-thing into the workstation, you've al-ready got it sync'd on a tape -basededitor. Anyone that says that such aunit does everything better than any-thing else is definitely stretching it. Ithink it's important to have all thesetechnologies-a digital workstationand high-powered tape -based editor,MIDI music composition, etcetera.

BR: When the time -code DATplayers get here, I think it's going tochange some of the things we're talk-ing about.

A VARIETY OFTECHNOLOGIES

MS: Anyway, the important thingis to have a variety of technologiesand to integrate those technologieson a case -by -case basis in the most ef-fective way. If you do all your gun-shots on the WaveFrame and thendrop a half hour's worth of gunshotsdown onto your multi -track format,you're done and out of there. Havingdifferent stations, different tech-nologies, and well-rounded opera-tors is paramount. The WaveFrameis excellent as a sound effects work-station. You can call up a huge libraryof effects online.

BR: It's kind of like Foley on a key-board.

MS: Or you can do EDL style onthe WaveFrame also. You can cut anentire spot on the WaveFrame-it'sfine.

Editel-Chicago loves their Audio -Files. Editel-New York has decided itis not time for a workstation, yet.And I tend to agree with them, interms of disc recording, because any-thing long -format in video would beedited on one -inch video tape andlaid back to one -inch video tape-and whatever you've got in betweenthere, as long as it's good and clean,digital or 30 in./sec., Dolby SR orwhatevei is more than enough.

It's more of an operational matter:how quickly and effectively can youdo things. Long -format stuff on aworkstation makes a lot of sense ifyou're doing the same thing all thetime like every episode of Miami Vicefor instance, because you've got sim-ilar elements all the time. They stayloaded, you don't have to wait for

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CD

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Figure 7. Editel's first floor.

downloads and things like that. Butin a full service audio -for -video facil-ity, I don't think it makes as muchsense. When the rest of this house isrunning D-2, things will be different.Hopefully, read-write optical will beavailable by that time. With a multi-track tape, all your elements arethere. Even if the session didn't fin-ish, or a new client walks in with atwo-hour session, we'll be able to fin-

Figure 8. The second floor.

SfrMr.1241.

a".11.1.

A___A :./1"TS'' 4

ish the previous session right afterthat. Simply remove the tapes, andput them back on.

Digital definitely helps to keepeverything clean. But the download-ing problem, in a full -service housewhere you've got fast turnover isdaunting. Now digital multi -track issomething I looked at, but shuttlespeed is so slow.

k non"4"

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ENGINEERING

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FIRST FLOOR

SL: So you've stayed away fromthat. Your digital work is currentlylimited to -

MS: WaveFrame and DAT. Whatwe're concerned with is keeping aneye on the entire chain. We want totry to avoid generation losses in ourweakest links.

SECOND FLOOR

BR We've done that with DAT.

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MS: Sure, but in terms of a videoproject, you feed everything into yourSynclavier from whatever formatsyou have, and the workstation pro-vides zero generation loss while youmanipulate the sounds. Then you putthat on your one -inch. It gets dubbedonto a protection maste4 which be-comes the source for further dubs.Putting the first generation of yourmix on both the master and the PM isa significant improvement. You losemore in dubbing one video tape toanother than you do by using ananalog 30 in./sec. 24 track.

So that's what we do. Being a videohouse helps. We make the PM firstand roll CMX simultaneously, so thefirst generation mix goes onto the ac-tual dub master, which really is thefinal product. The generation lacAPsproduced by editing sound in a videoedit may eventually be avoided by re-laying the original sound bytes fromthe camera rolls or the Nagradirectly to your Opus, or whatever.It's time consuming, but a good idea,given the unavoidable losses furtheron down; the one -inch going to athree-quarter or one -inch broadcastdubs or something. We have to keepthe chain in perspective. Right now,with C type one -inch video tape, Ithink the real issues in workstationor MIDI applications are speed of ex-ecution and creative flexibility.

SL: That echoes the attitude ofhouses I've talked to that do havethese machines.

BR Some other parts of the chainhave to change before workstationsbecome ideal.

A RAM SYSTEM IS STILLBEST

MS: Hopefully, by that time, we'llhave better ways of recording long -duration digital audio: removableoptical discs and so on. Meanwhile, Ithink a RAM system is better than ahard disc recorder for given portionsof a long -duration project. It offersmore capability in terms of pitch,complex envelopes, and layering,though currently you can only dothree, five, or ten minutes worth ofstuff. AKG has a RAM system thatacts like a disc recorder. We haven'tgotten a disc recorder because I can'tsee that it would contribute muchover the wise application of othertechnologies, in long format stuff.

SL: How is your music work pro-portioned?

Figure 9. A portion of Editel's music composition room. (Photo by JohnGarrett.)

MS: Two thirds is video related-the rest is radio and music for radio.No record stuff We can get much bet-ter rates in our fast turnaround busi-ness than studios that are strictlymusic, some of which are peddlingbeautiful rooms for $50 an hour.

SL: Their engineers often don'tmake much either.

MS: Back to the workstationthing. A disc -based editor is great forCD pre -mastering, editing, dancesmixes, etcetera-it's super. Thereyou're working on one project for agood deal of time and you've got longdurations of audio, tremendousediting capability, and no fast turn-ovei with somebody new walking inthe door a half hour later. Now if youwant to talk about music -for -video, Ithink having a dedicated music roomis important, and it's worked out tre-mendously for us. Our clients likehaving everything under one roof,though we hear that some potentialclients are not yet aware that wehave an audio facility here. Their ex-perience in the past has been withvideo houses that have meager audioresources, which has accustomedthem to using pure audio houses fortheir sound. What we have is anaudio business within a video busi-ness: Editel Sound, with its own ac-count executive, operationscoordinator, four engineers (threewith degrees in music), a music andsound effects specialist, and a staffcompose4 and a full service soundshop, with all the extra capabilities of

the video setup. In fact, quite a bit ofthe stuff that comes in the door isn'teven related to video.

There are definite advantages todoing your project all in one place.You can stop in and pre -pro with thecomposer and music producer, andcheck the progress while you'regoing from your offline edit to youronline edit, or while you're up ingraphics working on a 3-D thing. Youhave more input and you don't havetapes chasing back and forth acrosstown. Another advantage of beingunder one roof is that there's noquestion about who's responsible forthe quality of the final product. If wehandle the whole thing, then we'll doit right.

SL: And it's more synergistic.

MS: Right. It's also important forthe picture editor to have somethingto go by, in terms of timing the scenes,and to see the direction and growth ofthe music itself. On the other hand, incomposing music -for -picture, it'simportant for us to have pictures tomake the music just right. The an-swer to that is a combination of pre -score and post -score.

BR: On the Reebok project, wegave the client a feel, a groove thatthey liked. It wasn't just cut to a clicktrack. For a video editor, a feel is a lotnicer, more suggestive. So they cut tothat, and when we got it on the otherend, we dressed up the hits, and soforth. o,)

MS: Nothing wrong with putting abig cymbal crash on beat two.

BR: Sure, they do it in reggae,right? (laughs)

MS: At the beginning of the pro-ject, we didn't know where the hitswere going to be. Now we do, so weadd the right stuff, and it soundsgreat and looks great. I'd like to men-tion something else about that, too.Scoring sound effects in a MIDIroom, where you can record andmanipulate digital samples, as wellas access musical sounds, gives youmore creative flexibility. There's lessdistinction between what is a soundeffect and what is a musical cue. Fora certain scene, a door slam may beexaggerated, tuned down, doubled orlayered, and accompanied by a littlebassoon note or riff. It ends up quitedifferent from what you might strivefor with an AudioFile or an editorsystem.

Certain projects lend themselves tothat. One that comes to mind is achildren's show for Channel 5, ALikely Story. It's a weekly half-hourseries with a combination of soundeffects, dialogue, and a lot of littlemagical things. In many cases thoseeffects were done in this room, halfmusical and half literal. In somecases they had to match the musicthe client brought in the key, thetempo, and such. You'd be hardpressed to do that with anythingother than a RAM system. Our MIDIkeyboard -driven RAM systemenabled us to get a lot done, much,

There was once a heyday formulti -image shows based on 35mmslides. Who can forget The New YorkExperience, in the basement of theMcGraw-Hill building in Manhat-tan, or Where's Boston, originallyshown in its own pavilion. Slide A/Vpresentations were very much thestandard tool in training programsand information dissemination forcorporations and institutions. Buttimes change.

Ten years ago, a young audio en-gineer working at Envision, a BostonA/V production house, struck out onhis own to service the sound end ofthis media integration. Arklay Kingstarted small, setting up an audioprefacility in Copley Square thatevolved, of necessity, into an audio

much better. Long duration ambi-ances, bird twitters and crickets, orjust simple rock slamming. That caneasily be done in an editing room. Butit's in the more creative things, inmusical and sound effects, that thisroom shines. Having the two roomstied together is really the way to do it.We had an operator in each room,downloading back and forth, work-ing on different segments simul-taneously. In a single multi -track mixroom with MIDI gea.r you can't haveoperators and creators working atthe same time so quickly. Having allthese technologies, and being able tooptimally integrate them into thevarious aspects of a project, will getyou good product.

Editel Boston will complete theirrevisions and upgrades of CenturyIII's old space by this fall.

MIX -TO -PICTURE STUDIO

Sync'd SFX, ambient SFX, FoleySFX, music production and editingto picture, Vioo frame accuracy, auto-mated mixing.

CMX CASS-1 Editing System,MCI 636 32 channel console, OtariMTR 90 24 -track, Sony BVU 800 3/4 -

in. VTR, Studer A-810 2 -track ATRwith time -code center track, Otari5050 Mark III 2 and 4 -track sync'dATRs, NEC 650 CD played UREI811,Yamaha NS -10M and Auratonemonitors, digital FX processors, re -

verbs, compressors, compellors,single and double ended noise reduc-tion, and exciters.

SILVER LININGSpost house as the market graduatedfrom slide -based shows to video.Though still not very big, Silver Lin-ings has grown to three rooms and isthriving.

Sitting comfortably with Arklayand musician/engineer John Kusiakin their largest room on a hot day lastJune, I started our discussion withhistorical background.

SOME EARLY HISTORY

AK: The name Silver Liningscame from an artists collaborative inmy seminary days. Nobody thereminded that I took the name, so I in-corporated, and started primarilywith sound tracks for slide shows.Slide shows hit their peak around1985. Since then, that niche has been

AUDIO PRODUCTION STUDIO

All tape machines controlled by acustom -designed remote. An AdamsSmith Zeta -3 Sychronizer locks uppicture or slaving decks from othersuites.

MCI 618 console, MCI JH 110-B 1in. 8 -Track, Otari MTR-10 and MX5050 ATRs, Studer B67 and Fostex 3-

Track ATRs, Sony PCM 2500-A DATand BVU 800 3/4 -in. VTR, ReVox B-223 CD played GoldLine ASA-10Cspectrum analyzer, UREI 811 andAuratone monitors, plus delays,compressors, compellors, digital re -verbs, single ended noise reduction,and exciters.

DIGITAL MUSIC ROOM

Accelerated Mac SE, Performer3.0, (3) Yamaha DMP-7s, an Atari STwith 45 M removable disc runningSteinberg's Desktop Mixing pro-gram.

(3) AKAI extended memory S -

1000s with digital I/O, 400 M harddisc and 45 M removable discs, KorgM -1R, Roland D-550, Kurzweil K-250, AX+ and PX+, (2) Oberheim1000s, (2) Alesis HR -16 drum ma-chines, Yamaha TX -802 and, Emula-tor Proteus, Roland A-80, OctipadD-50, D-550, Steinberg SMP-24 In-terface , OpCode Studio III, LexiconLXP-1 & MRC, Drawmer gates,AudioArts parametric EQs , dbxcompressors, Fostex E-2 center -track ATR.

taken over by video, I would say. In1984, I bought a synchronizer andstarted doing video sweetening.

JK: But Silver Linings still didslide shows, primarily.

AK: Right. Museums, sales presen-tations, big sales meetings. Videowas then still too expensive. Nobodywanted to buy all the equipment. Atthe bottom, in terms of cost, wereslide shows. Above that, video, andhigher still, film. The slide show, backthen, was the most cost efficient andeasily changed format.

SL: But everyone had to rise to thenext level.

AK: Definitely. We had two studiosdoing just those sound tracks. Wehave a real good reputation for doingthat kind of evocative work. We have

music in that show with librarymusic. We're ideally suited for thatbecause of the size of our library'.

JK: There's no one in New Eng-land with a library this size.

AK: I started this library fifteenyears ago. I've got all the old stuff, in-cluding records one can't get any-more, and I keep them up to date.

JK: And all the sound effects li-braries that we know of in the world -

AK: We have them. Anyway, thisworked out really well. It was a lotcheaper for them to send their tape toBoston than it was to use New York.Now we're working on post produc-tion for Esquire's cable show. Theyship us the finished tape, fax us thenotes for what they want, we do it,and send it back.

JK: We did a hundred shows forChronicle, and we're doing anotherseventy-five starting soon. So theseare major projects that go from sixmonths to a year.

AK: Which poses a problem: howdo we budget the time?

SL: Yes. A lot of houses deal mostlywith projects that are in and out farmore quickly.

JK: Sometimes these clients arelate on their production schedule, sowe may have to shift the datescheduled for them, only to find thatanother client who wanted that dateisn't there anymore.

AK: Mark Humphrey, our young-est staff member, is in the third roomright now, handling a mammothdubbing project for Disney's World ofEnglish, a program that teaches

EXISTINGSOUND LOCK

a very large music library, with a lotof sou nd effects. Even though I'm nota musician, I have a good memory,and I'm good at using existing music.

JK: When the scene changed,some AN producers moved intovideo. Those people still come to usfor the quality of our work, thoughthey may have done their video atEditel or Target. Otherwise it wouldbe difficult for us, since the videohours, of course, want the clients touse their audio setups.

SL: John, you came on later?

JK: I came in (in 1984), and webuilt another room. I came at it fromthe other end, as a working musicianand composer doing music andsound tracks. After a couple of yearsthe A/V business began to slide, and Imoved into more original music andaudio post. The two go hand in hand.With A/V multi -image sound tracks,the music comes first. You programyour slides to it. So stock music worksreal well. But in scoring a video, stockmusic can be a problem.

AK: In 1985, 1986, the client basewas changing. Producers who hadbeen pumping out a lot of slide showsbegan to turn to video. The core ofour business was changing, and wewanted to get back into a niche. Orig-inal music and video post seemed thebest ways to go. We tried talkingbooks, but that was a bomb. We werealready too big for that to pay off. It'sbest left to small solo operators.

SL: You don't get involved with re-cord work.

JK: No. But we have a relationshipwith a stock music library in Toronto.We provide them with original musicfor their CDs. We record it here, usingsynthesizers and players, whateverwe need. But that's probably only 15

to 20 percent of our business, interms of time.

AK: It's actually an investment.

JK: It's a typical fifty-fifty publish-ing deal. It'll get shifted, if timedoesn't allow. We also do personal in-house projects as well as occasionalafter-hours music projects forothers. But few musicians can affordthe rates for this studio during theday. You can get twenty-four track intown for pretty low rates. The toprate for this room is $100/houi and$125 for video sweetening.

AK: I've been thinking of the othergroups you've talked to. Soundtrackis a big place! I think we're sort ofunique, more of an audio boutique.The bigger video houses you've beentalking to will sell whatever productthey have for audio, rather than letthat producer out the door. Perhapssaying, "if you do your audio here,we'll give you a break on the video."We came very close to moving in witha big Boston video editing house lastyear as their audio end, but at the lastminute we got concerned aboutlosing our identity in such a largeoperation and pulled out. They set uptheir own sound studio. In our searchfor a niche, we've had a lot of luckwith cable TV in New York. TheChronicle show was recently sold tothe Arts and Entertainment net-work. We're replacing a lot of the

Figure 10. Floor plan of Silver Linings.

STUDIOONE

ELEVATORS

ENTRY

rt,ISOLATION

BOOTH

HALL

MUSICLIBRARY

RECEPTION

STUDIOTHREE

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Figure 11. "John's Studio." Left to right-Mark Humphrey, JohnKusiak, and Arklay King.

English to Japanese kids. The tapeswere made over a ten-year periodand they didn't store them properly.Now all of them have print -through.They can't go back and re-recordthem, because it's all Disney charac-ters, and would cost a fortune. Sowe're cleaning up all the print -

through, all 57 hours of tape! Mark'sstarting to talk a little funny.

AK: I think we're one of the fewplaces that charge by the person,rather than by the equipment. I costmore than John, who in turn costsmore than Mark. So far, that ap-proach seems to have worked.

SL: Most of the people I've talkedto recently who are involved in postwork have indicated that a transitionto digital, for their multi -track ses-sions, is unlikely. In fact, that stepmay end up being skipped, as disc -and/or RAM -based workstations be-come more accessible.

JK: I think we work more quicklythan if we had a workstation. By thetime we could finish loading in a lot ofstuff for a five minute item, we'd bedone with the project. Arklay is one ofthe fastest engineers I've ever seen.And the other thing is, though I lovethis Macintosh, I don't want to sit infront of a CRT all day long.

AK: It seems to be turning out to bemore and more dangerous

JK: I like moving around andworking with tape and razor blades.

SL: DigiDesign's and Wave -Frame's system have some nice fea-tures.

AK: We saw the WaveFrame sys-tem. What overkill! We had a Syn-clavier here for a while. It just took so

long. It makes repeating the samething thirty times much easier. But todo each effect once. You can usuallyfly that in by eye and ear.

JK: When I'm placing effects thathave to be perfectly timed, I loadthem into the Kurzweil and syncthem up with Performer andSMPTE, and it works fine. If I'm lay-ing in traffic ambience in the back-ground, why load it into a sampler? Ican fly it in from a CD, cue it up, andlay it in. Most of the time the samplerapproach would take me two or threetimes as long.

SL: The workstation learningcurve can be pretty steep, initially. Doyou think your opinion would changeonce you get through that?

AK: Given that we are at the bot-tom of that learning curve, I can't besure. But it seems to me that one stillneeds more time for loading than weget.

JK: It depends on the job. Ifyou aregoing to be doing some forty-sevenspots that are all going to have thesame effects, and one different tag, itwould be much faster. There havebeen only a few times when a work-station would have been appropriatehere, as I see it. For most of ourthings, I doubt it would make thingsbetter. With dbx and careful atten-tion to signal level, we maintain veryhigh quality, especially going tovideotape. How can you get any quie-ter than dbx?

AK: We use dbx noise reduction onall analog tracks, except the onesthat go out the door. And we havefour DATs, with their invaluable in-dexing features, for all narration re-cording: one portable and three

console. So this is a very quiet studio.It's already quieter than digital tape.I don't feel we've compromised onquality. And I don't want to be underthat kind of overhead, dead weight,for something I don't really need.

JK: Not having a digital worksta-tion or an SSL board helps keep ouroverhead low, and also wards off thework we don't want to do. We couldput ourselves into serious debt withthat kind of equipment, but thenwe'd have to take every single jobthat comes in, and would have tohustle the work.

AK: We don't have an account ex-ecutive. I always hated being in theposition of having someone else sellthe job. And having the client, sittingwhere you are, say, "but they told meI was going to be able to." Then I getto disabuse them. The image I have ofthis company is of select, high-techcraftspeople.

JK: It's just the three of us (AK,JK, and MH). King Features, forwhom we're doing the Chronicle andEsquire stuff, really enjoy working ina situation where they know whothey're going to talk to each time thatthey call. They always get either Ar-klay or me. We know exactly what'sgoing on, and we really care aboutwhat we do. They love it!

SL: People are the difference.

JK: We don't have an SSL or ex-otica of that level, but we have theknow-how and the equipment tohandle most any problem that comesin here. What comes out of heresounds good. You don't always needall that equipment, and you may nothave the people who really know howto use it. I'd love to get some of thenewer machines, but we can't affordto keep buying more synthesizers.I've actually found that not havingthem allows me to fully plumb thedepths of what I do have.

SL: As opposed to exploiting thesesynths in a shallow fashion, thenthinking that now you need a neweritem.

(AK: This may be the only ARP2600 still in existence! (laughs) Youcan't buy a synthesizer now with awhite -noise generator in it. So if youwant to make a Poofffshsh!, youcan't do it with a modern synthesizer.With the old ARPs, you can.)

AK: This has been an interestingexperiment for all of us. We'vewanted to stay the same size; we've

all worked together for five yearsnow. And if we can make a go of it asa little company that takes care of theclients and the people in it, I thinkthat's real exciting.

SILVER LININGS EQUIP-MENT LIST (PARTIAL)

Audio:(2) Sound Workshop Logex-8 mixingconsolesRamsa WR-8210A mixing console(2) Otari MTR-90 2 in. 16 -tracks(2) Otari 5050 BQII 1/4 -in. 4 -tracks(3) Otari 5050 B 1/4 -in. 2 -tracks(1) Tascam 40-4 V4 -in. 4 -trackPanasonic SV3500 DATSony DTC-1000ES DATSony 500 DATTechnics SV-MD1 DATNakamichi DMP-100 Digital Proces-sor(3) Technics SL 1200 turntables(3) Technics CD players52 channels of dbx Type 1 noise re-duction

By the early 1970s, Ace was nolonger "the Place" when I firstdropped in. Boston's oldest record-ing studio was selling their vintagemicrophones, their huge three -trackAmpexes, their Presto disc -cutters,and anything else they could cash in.Over the years, it had produced,among other things, the minor hit"Psychotic Reaction," noted record-ing engineers Shelly Yakus, andPeter Fasciano.

Though he came from audio, Petertook off into the video business, andbecame, according to some, one ofthe local enfants terribles-the guywith the wild ideas, the guy whowould wear a clown nose to a session.He set up a two-inch Quad video editsuite on Sleeper Street in East Bos-ton, one of only two or three in townat the time. In 1979 he moved Vizwizto the current location on DummerStreet in Brookline, near BostonUniversity, eventually expanding tofour video edit suites, a large produc-tion studio, two Quantel Paintboxrooms, and an Alias 3-D animationspace. In September of last yeal Viz -wiz opened their newest addition, anaudio post suite equipped with aNeotek Elan console, JL Cooper

(3) Burwen transient noise filtersEAW MS -50 and Auratone monitors

Processing:Orban de-esser, parametric EQ,

stereo synthesize4 stereo limiterAshley stereo parametric EQ and

noise gatesUREI limitersAphex CompellorAphex 612 expanderEXR Aural ExciterAlesis MIDIverbUrsa Major Space StationKlark Teknic DN-780 reverbEventide HarmonizerYamaha SBX-90

Microphones:Neumann U -89s, AKG C -451s, EV,Shure, Sony, and others

Video:Studer A-801 in. layback recorderJVC CR-850U 3/4 -in. VTR

JVC CR-8250U 3/4 -in. VTR

VIZWIZMAGI automation, Otari, and otheranalog decks, dbx noise reduction,and a variety of MIDI equipment,processing geai and software, allcontrolled by a Macintosh II.

Ken French came on board in Mayof 1988 as audio design director. Now32, Ken started as a musician record-ing in his four -track basement studioin 1976. Doing live sound for localclubs and bands led him into largerstudio facilities and ultimately intojumping on the MIDI bandwagon in1985, sequencing on an IBM clone.He started a production outfit, Key-note Music, and began selling musicto TV stations and other productioncompanies. After a few months withSoundtrack, he landed his currentposition.

During my summer '89 survey ofBoston post facilities, I had lunchwith Ken and Jim Ball, Vizwiz'sother audio engineei who comesfrom a similar background. Pre-viously a competitor of Ken's, Jimjoined the company in December of'88 to help handle the ever-increas-ing workload. After observing thatmost people in audio post work are onstaff somewhere, as opposed to theprevalence of freelancers in album

Panasonic VHS VTRSigma color sync generatorTimeLine Lynx time -code modules

BTX Shadow II SynchronizerBTX Cypher SMPTE reader/gen-

erator

Instruments:2.5 M, 60 M HD Macintosh Plus

running Performer, Opcode patchlibrarian, and Intelligent Music's"M" and Jam Factory software

Kurzweil K-250 with sampling andQLS

Alesis HR -16 drum machineYamaha DX7Yamaha TX802 expanderYamaha TX81Z expanderOberheim Matrix -6Casio CZ -3000

ARP 2600ARP OdysseyRoland MKS -70 expanderRoland M-160 mixerSouthworth Jambox 4+JL Cooper MSB + MIDI patchbay

recording and other aspects of videoand film crafts, we talked a bit aboutthe differences between working instraight music, as opposed to postand mix-to-pix.

KF: The biggest difference I'vefound, coming from music produc-tion into this environment is the pro-duction time scale. When you'reproducing an artist, you may be inpre -production for a month. Thenyou spend lots of time in the studio.Here, a project might take three orfour weeks to go through the entirebuilding. So, at the beginning, Imight make some audio recommen-dations. After a month or so, the pro-ject arrives in this audio suite, and I'llusually have no more than one or twodays to finish it. You don't have theluxury of taking home rough mixes.You just bang it out.

SL: How do you find that?KF: I think you have to be real or-

ganized. You have to anticipate prob-lems early on, not discover what'sunusual about the project at 9 o'clockon the day of the qPqsion. And com-posing music with a client is a chal-lenge. People generally don't havethe vocabulary to talk about whatthey want in their music track. They

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Figure 12. Floor plan of the Audio Suite at Vizwiz.

might say they want something up-beat with a good tempo, somethingthat moves along.

SL: And something different.

KF: I try to draw them out. Do theywant it to sound like Bob James, or isit going to sound like Prince, orwhatever. I'll ask them about thefocus of the project-are they sellinga piece of hardware or a process, arethere people involved? Those are themain keys to the music-differentfeels for different products. And it'srewarding-because clients are usu-ally blown away. We also have about

300 CDs of music to draw from, tofurther emotional impact.

We produce mostly hybrids ofacoustic and synthesized music forour clients. We did a television newsopener recently, for instance. Firstwe prepared a tape with timecode, aclick track, and a reference track.Then we recorded a seven piece hornsection from the Boston Symphonyat a larger 16 -track studio that usesthe same multi -track format. We re-corded harp, flute, piccolo, and a per-cussionist here, and then finishedwith synthesized voices, oboe,clarinet, timpani, triangle, synthetic

A1 "

strings. It came out marvelously.While it might have been nice to havea complete orchestra do it, it wouldhave cost far more than $2-3,000 toproduce a finished piece this way.

SL: Live musicians bring thatextra nuance and timbral richness tothe work.

KF: We use them mostly for theperformance, actually. Jim and Iboth play guita4 too, so we're able toadd that critical little bit of unpre-dictability.

After lunch, we repaired to theaudio control room, very new andvery sleek.

KF: Until last year they had only avoice over booth. This involved bigstart-up costs, but we're still not realhigh end. We didn't want to sell thewhole store, just to put in all the fan-ciest bells and whistles. We use a one -inch sixteen -track with dbx noisereduction for our video sweetening.It's going to go back to video tape,after all. The 414 inch is the master forthe sync chain, with two Zeta -3 unitsfor synchronizing the 16 track andthe 2 track. We're thrilled with theNeotek (24x24 Elan) board. Each in-strument is pretty much dedicated toa channel. That way there's lessguesswork when revisions are calledfor a month later.

NEW SOFTWARE

KF: The new Mac system softwarewill be a breakthrough. They willhave the MIDI manager as part oftheir system, with serial port ins andouts patchable to different applica-tions. Then you can also patch appli-cations to other applications. Andthere's lots more. It looks like Applehas finally recognized that they'rehuge in the music business.

SL: Let's talk about workstations.

KF: We've just made an agreementwith DigiDesign to beta test the nextgeneration of Sound Tools. Their sys-tem is currently optimized for musicediting. You can define regions of asong and play them back in a listseamlessly. It's quite inexpensive,provided you have a Mac 2 with atleast 2 Meg and hard drives. We'retrying to help them develop softwaremore oriented towards audio post,with MIDI implementation similarto Q -Sheet. Q -Sheet can triggerevents through MIDI, but looks likean event list. As in a sequencer, youcan change the notes, velocities, andending times.

THE JL COOPER MAGI

Another attractive feature of thisprogram is cost-effective automatedmixing. The JL Cooper MAGI, withits dbx VCAs, inputs and outputs acontinuous stream of controller codeto Q -Sheet in the Mac, giving us add-on automation at a fraction of thecost of larger systems. The way wehave this set up, patching can be-come a jungle, so we just automate

tracks that really need that tight con-trol.

A lot of what we do here is fix badaudio tracks. That's the nature of thebusiness. Though when we do a pro-ject from start to finish, we don't en-counter that problem. For example, Ihad a voice over track that was reallya mess: recorded on three differentmicrophones, at three different loca-tions. I multi -tracked it into threetracks and used the automation toswitch back and forth. If I wereswitching and matching by hand, Imight go nuts. So we automate thedifficult tracks and do the others byhand-it's a combination.

SL: You chose MIDI automationover other types?

KF: We're investing in the futureof MIDI as the controlling code. AndDigiDesign is very interested in ourideas. We get the feeling that a lot ofQ -sheet units out there are not beingfully exploited. But we've built oursystem around it-for both assem-bling and mixing the sound tracks.We're also beta -testing for S & S Re-search's Video Timepiece, whichconverts VITC to MIDI.been around for a long time, but onlyin few video facilities. S & S wantsthis box to be in everybody's homestudio ultimately, an under -$800 -box that will read and write MIDIonto video tape, convert to MIDI, andcontrol your sequencer or Q -Sheet.On our work dub with VITC timecode, we'll be able to scroll the videoright to where a door closes and cap-ture the exact time code location

with a click. Currently, everyone usesa window dub, the only way to get aframe -accurate representation ofexactly where you are, then types thenumber in by hand. Or captures it.But it can still be off by half a second.It's also going to be very useful inmixing, mutes at scene changes, andso on. So we're enjoying the develop-ing of new Mac -based software andsystems.

SL: Other than your own stuff, youdon't do any non -post audio?

KF: Obviously video -related jobscome with a bigger ticket. We used tobring voice tracks, some music off aCD, and a couple of sound effects tothe edit suite, which is what is stilldone in some places. But generation -quality lasses from bounces betweenvideo tapes are hard to swallownowadays, particularly at severalhundred dollars an hour. Now theproducer can come upstairs at halfthe price and have a lot more flexi-bility, quality, and fun.

Some buyers like to go to special-ists: an audio boutique, a film -to -video tape transfer boutique, a

boutique. Now we do every-thing here, so we sell the wholeprocess-and the people with it. Weform a SWAT team, as it were for aproject, with an in-house producer; adirector; script writers, lights andcameras, and so on, to work with aclient all the way through the produc-tion. Then in post -production wehave the editors, the graphic design-ers, and the audio. And we make thedubs.

Figure 13. A front -of -room view of the Audio Suite.

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The climate in the video produc-tion is more competitive than everbecause there are more facilitiesthan ever. People who have a goodidea and are able to communicate itand produce it are the people who aregoing to survive. Our corporate mis-sion is to find the business pro-fessional with a communicationproblem and solve his problem for aprofit.

CORPORATE VIDEOSL: Corporate video work appears

to be the principal nut for most of thepost houses in this town.

KF: It's 50 percent of our business.The rest is about half and half TV adsand broadcast theme music. The cor-porate business, however, is tied togeneral economic cycles, probablymore so than advertising and broad-cast work. So we're looking for morenational business. We've just ex-panded from four to six full-timesales people this year.

Vizwiz also has a healthy interac-tive video disc production business.We stopped by one of their Paintboxrooms.

KF: The discs have two channels ofaudio. The computer in the kioskbrings up a text graphic screen for aquiz or exam. Typically, channel onegoes with the video. Channel two iswild audio for the user to access.Sometimes I'll pre -mix an audiotrack and they'll cut to it. And othertimes, the other way around. It de-pends on how organized the projectis, if their story boards are tightenough, and so forth. So it's a prettywild world of video.

SL: To compare Vizwiz further tothe competition

KF: I guess what makes us differ-ent from any other facility is that wetry to get involved with the clientearly on, effectively replacing theagency. We did a campaign recentlyfor a national auto body repair chain.They had a problem. People thoughtof them just as a car -painting com-pany. So we did a series of spots andimage designs to address the factthat they do collision work, all thecopywriting, and everything from

Over the past ten years, the pro-duction of TV commercials and cor-porate videos has grown into an

scratch. An agency might havehopped from boutique to boutique.

JB: We cut out the middle man andgo directly to the client.

KF: And we don't find ourselvesfixing bad audio, which is rarely fun.

JB: But the variety is nice. I didn'thave as much radio background asKen. He's always describing thiswork as flying by the seat of yourpants. That's where we try to comefrom. We want to get the stuff donequickly, but creatively.

KF: Vizwiz has developed a reputa-tion as a high -end company that cansolve challenging problems. It grewfrom the ground up to four one -inchediting suites. I believe we were thefirst in town to get the Paintbox and3-D graphics systems. But the last intown to get in-house audio.

AUDIO EQUIPMENT LIST

Computer HardwareApple Macintosh II w/ 2MB RAMJasmine 70MB Inner DriveJasmine 100MB DirectDriveMegaGraphics 19 -in. MonochromemonitorApple 13 -in. Monochrome monitorApple Imagewriter II printerSonus MacFace MIDI interfaceJL Cooper MSB+ MIDI switcherRoland MPU-105 MIDI to CV inter-face

SOFTWAREMark of the Unicorn Performer andProfessional ComposerDigiDesign Q -Sheet AN Sound De-signer II, Turbosynth, and FX De-signerOpcode Systems Editor Librariansfor Yamaha DX/TX, Roland D -50 andSuper Jupiter, and Ensoniq ESQ

AUDIO COMPONENTSNeotek Elan 24x24 Mixing consoleJL Cooper MAGI mixer automationYamaha DMP-7 MIDI automatedmixer2 Neumann U-89 microphonesUREI 803 and Yamaha NS -10 studiomonitors

TARGET PRODUCTIONSindustry estimated by New EnglandBusiness at $50 million a year. In1986, after a long and illustrious

Crown D-150 power amplifierTechnics SL -1200 turntable andSLP-1200X CD player

RECORDERS ANDSYNCHRONIZATIONJVC CR-850U 3/4 -in. VCR

Panasonic VHS hi-fi VCROtari MX -70 16 -track ATR

Sony 5003 2 -track ATR w/ centertrackOtari MX5050 2 -track ATR18 channels of dbx type I noise reduc-tionDigiDesign Sound Tools digital audioediting systemPanasonic SV-250 DAT ATR

2 Nakamichi MR -2 ea c.c.ette re-corders2 Adams Smith Zeta III synchroniz-ers w/ remoteS & S Research Video Time PieceVITC to MIDI converterOpcode Time Code Machine

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTSKurzweil MIDI Board and PX-100Sound module2 AKAI S-900 Digital samplersYamaha TX -802 sound module andRX-5 drum module

Roland D-550 and MKS -80 soundmodulesEnsoniq ESQ-M sound moduleVarious guitars, amplifiers, and per-cussion instruments

SIGNAL PROCESSINGLexicon PCN 60 digital reverb andPCM-70 digital effects processorKorg DRV-3000 digital effects pro-cessor2 UREI LA -4 compressor/limiters

dbx 166 dual channel compres-sor/limiterOrban 422A gate/compressor/ lirn-iter/de-essPrTroisi 518 parametric EQ rackSymmetrix 511A noise reductionAshley SC -33 dual channel noise gate

BBE Electronics 802

career in television that garneredhim multiple Emmy awards, ChetCollier decided to leave the network

arena to start Target Productions.Networks had long been losingground to independent stations andcable, and the involvement of cor-porations in video communicationpotential was experiencing explosivegrowth: an ideal fray for the qual-ified, connected, and knowledgeableentrepreneur.

Taking advantage of the -then rela-tively low cost of space in Charle-stown, Target leased 12,000 feet inthe old Schrafft's candy building, set-ting up a video studio, two edit suitesand a Quantel Paintbox room. Theysoon added a second Paintbox, andthen decided to incorporate an in-house audio facility. It includes aMacintosh and MIDI based musiccomposition room and another witha 16 Meg, 32 -voice Synclavier, fourtracks of Direct -to -Disc tapeless re-cording, a Studer A-80 24 -track, anda Neotek console.

This past summer, I had a chance totour Target and chat with operationsmanager Pete Fiedler (Arthur's son),VP and engineering manager BobPeirce, and my friend and colleagueSteve Blake, now Target's senioraudio engineer.

SOME EARLY SCENES

SL: At first, you farmed out theaudio?

BP: The object at our inceptionwas to build the best possible videoproduction house. Money is alwayslimited, so rather than cut corners tosqueeze everything in, we chose tospecialize. The best couldn't includeaudio at that point, because that'swhere the budget ran out. We had adeal cooking for an audio house tojoin us, but it didn't work out. So weadded our own audio on the secondround which was just about a yearafter we opened the doors.

PF: Before this place was evenfinished, I remember Bob standing inthe middle of all the sawdust andtwo-by-fours, asking with consider-able excitement if I had heard of "thisthing called a Synclavier?" You canmake the sound of an ocean by push-ing one key. It's unbelievable. Bobkept that bee in his bonnet.

BP: I got to know Steve Blakethrough his assistance in the acousti-cal aspects of our facility. When it be-came apparent that we wanted toupgrade the talent in the audio con-trol room, I asked him if he knew any-one who would like to learn to run aSynclavier.

SB: I started hunting around townfor possible people, then suddenlyflashed "wait a minute:" and jumpedat the opportunity myself.

Figure 14. Floor plan of Target Productions.

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BP: This was two o'clock in the af-ternoon. I said, can you be here atfour for a pre -pro meeting. Andthat's where it took off. Steve came inthe next day and spent the wholeweekend here learning the system.

SL: I notice that your console facesthe client desk, with the Synclavierat the front of the room.

BP: Steve actually spends a greatdeal of his time at either the Syn-clavier keyboard or the CRT, workingwith the picture monitor at the frontof the room. For the final mix, theSynclavier goes on auto -pilot, and hesits at the console, with direct two-way communication with the client.It turns out to be an enormouslybeneficial way to work. I've beenthinking of building a video edit suitethat way.

SL: Did you consider other work-stations?

BP: At that time, it was reallyeither the Fairlight or Synclavier.Opus was still only a mockup. Wewere courted by New England Digi-tal, who has proven to be a great part-ner. They've been very supportive, inboth maintenance and operation.I'm also convinced that they reallyhave their act together. They're outin front of everybody, with a lot ofothers still trying to catch up.

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Figure 15. Target caught by a wide-angle lens.

SL: How do you feel about the load-ing -time frustrations of currentworkstation technology?

SB: Projects tend to come into Tar-get's audio suite for a full day ormore, rather than for two or threehours each, four different ones a day.The twenty minutes or so of loadingor backup time required for our typi-cal audio tracks can be handled earlyin the morning, during lunch, and inthe evening. To the client, that aspectis quite transparent.

BP: This week's client is workingon an hour-long training audio tapefor salespeople. He wants to keepthem awake while they're listeningto it, so it's absolutely wall-to-wallsound effects. And there's an hour ofvoice overwork, with a lot of actors.We master the voices on the Sony F-1,and then only load into the Syn-clavier what's really required. We'lledit and assemble the stuff in theSynclavier, and do the loading andunloading when they're not present.

USING THE SYNCLAVIER

SL: Do you keep everything insidethe Synclavier?

SB: That was the approach I in-herited here when I arrived. But nowI try to balance the technologies ofthe Synclavier the Direct -to -Disktapeless system, the F-1, and the 24 -

track, using each where appropriate.We usually start with a 3/4 -inch videotape with address track time code,feed voice-over to it through the F-1,and transfer that to the tapeless sys-tem for editing. Ambient sound ef-fects are loaded into theDirect -to -Disk from CDs, and othersare triggered from the Synclaviersampler by its keyboard. Musicsequencing is constructed offline onthe Macintosh, and instrumentsounds are transferred track bytrack from the Synclavier to the 24 -

track, played by the Mac sequencer.But we generally only use the 24 -

track for large orchestral pieces.

BP: Whenever possible, we'll stayin the Synclavier. It's faster has bet-ter quality, and is easier to manipu-late; all the obvious reasons. The24 -track is a better storage formatwhen you're trying to do a lot of realinstruments. Some of the instru-ments we store in the Synclavier areenormously memory -intensive

PF: Flute takes up 7.9 Meg.BP: One, it samples at 100 K. Two,

we need new samples every threenotes of the scale. And three, we useseparate sets of samples for differentvelocities, and different envelopes.

PF: But we're finding that we ac-tually get a lot more sounds off theMIDI gear than off the Synclavier fora lot of the music we're writing.

BP: For the television and com-mercial stuff.

PF: But you can't beat the Syn-clavier for strings, and for some ofthe drums.

SB: And for full orchestral sounds.We recently worked up the secondmovement of Beethoven's Fifth, ini-tially as a demo of the machine'scapabilities. It was later used by aEuropean client who needed somecleared classical music as a bed. Itcame off beautifully.

SL: Some I've talked to feel thatworkstations in general are more ap-propriate to shorter projects.

MEMORY MANAGEMENTPF: One of the things required for

operating the Synclavier is goodmanagement of available memoryspace. That was one of our toughestlessons. Initially, we were configuredwith a rather small amount ofmemory, but we've since upgraded.

BP: Memory management turnsout to be the whole thing. Skill atmarshalling resources. In a tape en-vironment you just keep throwingnew tape into the hopper if you needto. In this kind of environment, youmust be aware of your limitations, ofthe most efficient way to do things, ofwhat to save and what not, and soforth. The absolute skill of the opera-tor as a manager becomes vital.When we were first running the sys-tem, we didn't have that kind ofcapability, and would run up againsta wall early on in some long projects.The project we were just visiting is anhour-long audio tape, voice-over allthe way, and loaded with sound ef-fects they never stop: they're buttedup against each other all the waythrough.

PF: And the reason the clientscome here is that they can stay in thedigital format and do fantastic high-speed manipulation of sound effectsand revisions. The editing capabili-ties are so powerful.

BP: I think we've shown that youcan do long -format things with thisgear. We've done documentaries forPBS-

PF: Three Frontlines-BP: And two Novas, right. You

have to have a wizard sitting in theseat who knows what he's got towork with and where he has to go.Using the Sony F-1 system is one ofthe classic ways of saving memoryspace until you need to commit.

SL: Have you used DAT recordersor are you waiting for SMPTE stripe -able DATh?

BP: Right. Everything in thishouse runs on SMPTE time code,and we need that kind of control.

SL: Do you see yourselves movingfrom your Studer A-80 24 -track todigital multi -track, or will you waitfor the workstations to become morecapable, with more and cheaperRAM and optical disc recording?

BP: We're not seeing any pressureto move toward digital multi -track.Digital is probably wonderful for aproduction studio that's doing al-bums, given all the tracks 32, 48, ormore.

SL: One of those, Newbury Sound,just installed the area's first digitalmulti, a Mitsubishi X-850.

PF: When we first opened, we hadbuilt this place to be a one -inch(video) production house, more thananything. And what emerged imme-diately was the onslaught of Beta andBeta -SP We are not seeing that in theaudio, nor are we seeing it in thevideo, in terms of D -2 and that influx.So I don't think the digital audiomulti -track format is going to be-come a major thing in the video sec-tor. I don't think the savvy is there onthe part of the clients, in some re-spects. Nor the need for the clarity.

BP: Heavy editing and relaying aretough to do in digital. And digital isunforgiving of sudden overloads.

SL: Ironically, compressors are areal necessity at times.

BP: In the video world, peoplecome in with on -site recordings, andyou get what you get. Analog handlesoverloads rather gracefully.

FROM START TO FINISHSL: Obviously, none of your work

involves records.BP: Right. Most of the music we've

done has been in conjunction withvideo. For instance, we just did the

theme for channel 56's News here inBoston. We did one piece of music forA&E Network. We did all of theirgraphics. The ideal client for us issomebody who shoots in the studio,posts in the edit suite, and thencompletes their audio post in theSynclavier room. We optimized thefacility for video and mix-to-pix. Wedon't have a large recording studioand can't accommodate large num-bers of studio musicians. What wehave done instead is build a rathercomplete facility for music composi-tion, particularly in conjunction withpictures. We use a few simple synthe-sizers and drum machines with Per-former software on Macintosh toactually write the music, to get all thebasics done. Then we take the Per-former software into the main room,and cause Performer to drive theSynclavier to produce the real sound.We'll add a few live musicians to itwhere that's appropriate, and putthe music together that way. We dothat not only for our own stuff withour own on -staff composers, but wehave some outside composers whowill bring in their own Macintoshdisc, written under Performer, and

SL: How would you describe Tar-get's position in the local audio postmarket?

BP: Off the cuff, the first differ-ence is that we've got Steve Blake.No matter what one has for hard-ware, the guy who says good morningwhen you walk in the door is thewhole project. Steve has beenwonderful for us in making the placeperform. My responsibility encom-passes new equipment and repairs.Steve just drives me unmercifully,saying, "I can do better with this.You've got to do something about it."He's that kind of a guy. That's beenimportant in making this work forour clients.

PF: Steve understands what it is tobe a client. He's been one, and hasalso been a salesman. He's apotpourri of experience and he justwill not stop until he gets it doneright. The clients that work with himcome back because they have such agreat experience. He has also takenthe time and the effort to master thetool that he's working with. Heknows the Synclaviei and conversesbeautifully with it. That's a real plus.When you combine such a powerful

tool with a powerful operatol the re-sult is success.

BP: Beyond that, with Peter's andDave Grimes' talent for writingmusic, we have unique compositionabilities here. And the Synclavier willdo what most other houses in towncan't do. It is not all things to allpeople. There are still some thingsthat can be done better with a razorblade, and we are not equipped for se-rious razor editing. Furthe4 I thinkwe have the finest audio controlroom Fast of the Mississippi, acousti-cally.

SL: How about Target versus NewYork?

PF: I think the mentality of thiscity is different from New York. Forexample, Joe Pasquale, who does our3-D graphics, loves it here because, ashe says, "Gee, I can actually get in-volved in creating, along with yourdesigners, the projects that we'redoing. In New York, I'm handedboards from an agency, and you justdraw lines, make the circles, put inthe colors, and ship it out. Boomboom!"

That contrast flows over into theaudio, here. Plus the market is somuch different. Boston has a largecorporate -work base, versus anagency -based market in New York.Corporate and agency demands andapproaches are quite different. Idoubt we're competitive with NewYork. I don't think that's really aquestion.

CORPORATE CLIENTS

BP: A corporate client may tie thisplace up for an entire week, but it'snot like it locks somebody else out,because they're over at their placewriting their project, which will go totape the following week. It's a wholedifferent scheduling idea, a wholedifferent thinking process, creativeprocess. We do spots here too, and wehave agencies come in, but the driv-ing force is corporate. A very differ-ent world. Corporate clients are notinterested in the jingle that capturesan extra 100,000 customers. They'reinterested in music which conveysthe message, and gives them a bed forlong -form pieces. For instance, apiece for a trade show, in which theaudio has to catch people by the boothand has to tell them something in along form. It's got to capture their at-tention for five minutes, say. Not 30

seconds. There's a different designphilosophy involved.

SL: How about the future for Tar-get.

BP: Well, we're expanding our off-line composition facility.

SL: A nice big room for off-line, thenew one.

PF: But we have to keep a noosearound Steve's neck. (Laughs.) Ob-viously he wants to max out the Syn-clavier. We'd like to continue toupgrade it, for more power: moreRam, more Direct -to -Disc space, op-tical disc recording, a new Macin-tosh -bated control system. All thatstuff. Very costly.

BP: There is still a need to educateproducers about the workstationcapabilities. That's a hard sell. Pro-ducers do not like to admit that theydon't know it all, when they walk inthe door. They need to know that

db STAFF

working in this environment istotally different from that of tape.Once they've learned, they just havea grand time discovering all thethings they can do. So that's a con-tinuing process. To expand ourmarket, we have to educate peoplemore than sell them.

PF: One client that came here thatcompletely flipped out over the Syn-clavier was Bose Corporation. Theycame here to work on a video aboutthe Acoustic Wave cannon, fortheaters that were installing thatsystem, and wanted this huge gongsound. We worked with Steve Rug-gere, their senior creative director.This is the only place he could getwhat he wanted. They were blownaway by the Synclavier's sound.

SL: And their appreciation washelped out by having a good listeningenvironment.

PF: Right.

BP: Absolutely.

SL: Both being designers, Steveand I know that having the room -as -instrument work properly can becritical.

Both: Right!

AUDIO EQUIPMENT

Syncla vier Digital Audio System withDirect -to -Disc

Neotek console with automation

Studer A-80 24 -track

Sony 1/4 -in. 2 -track with center track

Sony F-1 with time code

Sony 3/4 -in. with time code

Bryston and UREI monitoring

Peripherals by dbx, Valley People,Lexicon, Klark-Technic, Roland,Yamaha

JAY ROSE'S ATTIC STUDIO

If you order a hamburger in Bos-ton, listen to the Boston Symphony,or even make a phone call, chancesare pretty good your decision was in-fluenced by tapes made in a hundred -year -old attic in suburban Brookline.

A century ago, Jay Rose's AtticStudio was a maid's room. Now it'sthe 8 -track home of commercials forsuch major advertisers asMcDonald's and New England tele-phone, and video tracks for clients in-cluding The Boston SymphonyOrchestra and Parker Brothers.Director/editor Rose is a twenty-yearveteran of the audio business, andwinner of over a hundred awards, in-cluding thirteen Clios. He opened hisattic studio in the Fall of 1977, afterresigning as Principal Sound De-signer at Century III (nowEditel/Boston), one of the largestaudio/video facilities in New Eng-land.

The Boston market is saturatedwith major 24 -track music andaudio -for -video facilities. Rose'sattic success can be an encouraginglesson for any Electronic Cottage.

THE OPERATION

The attic studio is not, in the classicsense, a studio at all; there is no iso-lated recording space.

"Most radio or television produc-tion time is spent in post editing andmixing," Rose explains, "so I mod-eled the room after a video post suite.I can record basics anywhere I want,then come home to a comfortableediting room and put the job to-gether " A recent telephone companycommercial sent him to the L.A.Studios in Hollywood to direct char-acter players, to Atlantic Studios inNew York for the music, and then toBoston's Le Studio and Editel to en-gineer and direct voice-overs andFoley.

"The aural difference between anytwo good studios isn't in the controlroom, it's in the recording space.Since I'm not committed to a record-ing space of my own, I can go towherever I'll get the best possibletracks. And since I usually engineermyself', wherever I go, I get a techni-cally consistent sound out of anyspace." Rose keeps engineering rela-tionships with a number of 24 -trackstudios in New England. Becausehe's considered an expert audio -for -video editor and mixer and is an As-sociate Professor on the subject atBerklee College of Music, he'sfrequently hired by those same facili-ties to work for their clients.

Jay Rose's Attic Studio staff con-sists of Rose and a hard-workingMacintosh SE computer (see sidebar,The Computerized Cottage). "I

wanted the kind of operation where Icould shut down for a week or twoand not worry about rent or salaries.The studio itself doesn't cost memuch to keep running-attics areknown for their low overhead-andthe Mac handles most everythingelse.

THE FACILITYThe attic is small; all of its audio

functions take place in a 9 x15 space.(He has a separate home office whichhe shares with his wife, a free-lancewriter). Isolation was a matter ofluck; there are no adjacent livingspaces, and immediately below thestudio is a quiet bedroom. Absorptionis provided by glass fiber batts in theceiling and along one slanted wall.An 8500 BTU room air conditioner,mounted in a distant attic windowand ducted through flexible glassfiber for noise reduction, providesunobtrusive cooling and ventilation.

Broadcast production more oftendemands accurate editing and fly -insthan multiple overdubs. For this rea-son, advertising rooms usually fea-ture multiple quarter -inch decks andan eight track, rather than a twenty-four track with a single mix -downmachine.

The facility uses four ReVox/Studer decks: a pair of well -main-tained A700s for lay-ups, a high-speed full -track A77 for blade

editing, and a brand new C278 formulti -track. All of the machines arebeing constantly babied and mod-ified by Rose:

"The ReVox A77HS is a dynamiteediting deck- much faster than any-thing by Ontari-if you make a fewchanges in the muting and frontpanel arrangement. Similarly, A700sare great lockup decks, if you knowwhere to grab the tach signal. Anygood pro deck of that vintage cancome pretty close to new analogspecs if you keep it clean and ad-justed, and give it new heads and rub-ber." Rose also believes mechanicaladjustment, often neglected in serv-ice shops, is as important as elec-tronic tweaking. He keeps a fullrange of test equipment on hand

While he likes to exploit classic taperecorders, much of his other equip-ment is state-of-the-art. He usessamplers extensively (Casio FZ-1and Kurzweil K-1000); maintains alarge and varied CD sound effects li-brary; and has Eventide H3000B,BBE and Aphex processors. He isalso involved in cutting -edge equip-ment design as a consultant to AKGAcoustics' Boston -based Digital Di-vision on their newly -introducedDSE-7000 audio work station.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

Despite his busy booking schedule,technical and teaching activities,and free-lance writing for majorclients, Rose swears he's basicallylazy: "The goal is to have everythingright under your fingertips, whenyou need it." He frequently worksten-hour days during productions, soergonomics was an important con-sideration in studio layout.

The studio is designed to accom-modate four distinct functions:editing, tracking, synthesis, andmixing (see Figure 16). Each has itsown overlapping operating position,with specialized tools handy.

For blade editing, he sits at a coun-tertop -mounted A77HS, with directdown -lighting, CD and tape sourcesclose by; an Aurotone dedicated tothe edit deck; and even a bulletinboard for tacking up copy. Space isprovided for taping trims along thecounter.

Once elements are cut, he builds byflying -in from a pair of A700s flush -mounted on a separate counteralongside the multi -track. Rosesettled on the A700s, which he re-cently bought used and then rebuilt,after a long search of compact decksthat included the current ReVox lineand the Otari MX -50 and MX -55."The Otaris start well enough for fly -ins, but don't lend themselves to

Figure 16. Layout of Jay Rose's Attic Studio.

A77Rack &

patchbay

A700

Rack

A700 C278SynthRack

mounting in a two -foot -deep coun-tertop. The ReVox 272 is compact,but starts slowly and the manufac-turer refused to discuss modifica-tions." The two decks are mountedalongside each other, so tape can bewound from one to the other.

Output from the A700s goesthrough a routine switcher, and thento a distribution network feeding thefirst six inputs of the adjacent 278(the last two channels are usuallyused for stereo mixdowns, or for mix-down-plus-timecode). Outputs of themulti -track are normalled into themixer, then through a compressorand to the power amp. For mosttracking and layup, no patch cordsare ever needed.

The routine switcher also sees anoutboard Kawai mixer located in thesynth rack. With this input con-nected, he can lay synth trackswithout having to move from anoperating position directly in front ofthe keyboards. A pigtail hangs fromthe synth rack to support the Mac SEfor sequencing.

Mixing takes place at a modifiedKawai 8 x 5 x 1 sound -reinforcementboard, directly in front of a colorvideo monitor and a real-time analy-zer, and between two Advents(chosen for their smooth mid -range)and two Radio Shack "Minimus"

TapeStorage

Figure 17. Jay Rose in a corner of the home office.

speakers. Rose uses extensive out-board equalization, including Orbanparametrics and Crown cutoff fil-ters, so he wasn't concerned withmore than three -knob EQ on theboard. Effects are organized intoracks within arms' length of the mixposition, with a custom switcher toinsert frequently used effects combi-nations (e.g., limiter/gate/de-esser)without patch cords.

He frequently prepares multiplemusic and effects tracks for videoprojects, which he then mixes eitherin his own facility or at local 24 -trackmix -to -picture suites. For sync, heuses a four -machine BTX rig hatedon the "classic" 4600 edit controller:

the first practical editor that allowedpreviewing and frame -accuratetrimming of punch -ins.

New England is a competitivestudio market and growing produc-tion center dominated by advertis-ing and video/audio studios.Extensive client services, rangingfrom fully -staffed kitchens to plushgame rooms, are common. Somestudios employ commissioned "ac-count executives," who drop in onmixes and make sure the clients arehappy.

"This is my home. I'm glad to havefriends in, to work on a job with me.And since these are friends, they'rewelcome to use the phone or pour a

Figure 18. The mixing position. Note the SMPTE controls surroundingthe console, and a spectrum analyser sitting atop the video monitor.

CO

cup of coffee. The fact that they'realso agency personnel or video pro-ducers, and paying for my time, issecondary. But if they need to be en-tertained, then they're probably notcontributing anything to the project.Occupancy by more than threepeople is counter -productive."

Some advertising sessions do re-quire, for valid creative or politicalreasons, more clients or client -hand -holders than Rose is willing to ac-commodate in his attic. When thishappens, he'll prepare special effectsat home and then edit and mix at thesame outside studio he uses for track-ing.

He believes positioning is very im-portant in studio marketing: "Youcan't be all things to all clients.

"It's even arguable that an adver-tising or video post studio can't beboth a creative boutique and a multi -room factory.. at least, as far as I canremember in both Boston and NewYork, nobody's managed to carry itoff."

Rose definitely specializes as anadvertising -oriented, audio- andvideo -post creative "boutique" en-

he's carefullynurtured over his career, with agencycontacts and through the marketingof his previous studios.

Throughout most of the 1970s andearly 1980s, he ran an advertising -oriented multi -room facility underhis own name. While he offered suchspecialized services as a full-timeneedle -down music and effectslibrarian, and the first mix -to -pic-ture facility in Boston, it made apoint of not being equipped with adrum booth. Jay Rose even ran Yel-low -pages advertising that readsimply, "We do not Rock 'n Roll!"

Since he already had a strong namein the advertising and video markets,moving to an in -home free-lance bus-iness didn't present the usual studiorecognition problems. "Some of myclients even said they were glad theycould hire me directly now, withouthaving to be tied down to one facilityor another"

He currently promotes primarilyby word-of-mouth, with occasionaldirectory advertising. His rates, inthe hundred -dollar -an -hour range,are similar to the larger Bostonoperations. "Sure, I don't have aparking lot or a switchboard opera-tor. But I do a better job in less time;so why should I charge less?"

There are so many new digital dev-ices being introduced now, Rose sayshe sometimes feels "like a kid in acandy shop." His next major upgradewill probably be the replacement ofhis stereo Nagra with time -codedDAT, as standardized SMPTE ma-chines become available. He's alsolooking very closely at digital audiowork stations, both because of his af-filiation with AKG's new productand because of his long-term interestin editing technology (He alsoworked with CMX on the beta -test-ing of their CASS-1 audio editingcontroller). "A year and a half ago, Iedited a Tammy Grimes voice-overentirely on my Casio FZ-1 keyboardsampler. It was the best machine forthe subtle intonation changes theclient wanted. One nice thing aboutadvertising work is that you haveaccess to the whole world of MI tech-nology, and the broadcast clientshave no problem paying for special-ized equipment and techniques tohelp them get the job done."

One thing he refuses to do is let theattic studio grow large. It will alwaysstay an Electronic Cottage industry.Asmulti -studio complex during most of

the 1970s and early 1980s, helearned what he calls the disadvan-tage of a big operation:

"When I had a big studio, I was con-stantly torn between making thespots better-and winning a fewmore Clios-and making the com-pany more efficient.

"The attic is big enough to do thejob I want. Getting bigger wouldn'tmake me any happier."

EQUIPMENT LIST

Tape recorders8 track: Studer/ReVox C-278V4 inch: ReVox A-700 (two), ReVox A-77HS full track, Tascam 32 (two; onemodified f/t record)Portable: Nagra IV -S, Nagra SN min-iatureCassette: Teac 270 (three)

KeyboardsCasio: FZ -1, CZ -101

Kurweil: K-1000 (enhanced)Roland: MKS50, PG300EML: 101 Analog

Outboard Gain ProcessingAllison: Gain Brain (two), Keypex(two)

Quad -8: Noise Gate (two)Orban: 516 De-esser, 418Limiter

EQ FilterOrban: 621 ParametricCrown: VFX-2A Cutoff

Time FunctionEventide: H3000BUrsa: Space StationAlesis: MIDIO-verb twoART: 1.5 second DelayIbenez: Harmonics Delay

PsychoacousticAphex: Model EBBE: Model 422

Stereo

Noise ReductionDBX: 150 Type oneBurwen: DNF 1200, THE 7000

MicrophonesAKG: C 451 w/ CK1, CK8, CK9 cap-sules (two sets)EV: RE -16Sony: ECM 50

THE COMPUTERIZED COTTAGENine years ago, when personal

computers were new to the recordingindustry, Jay Rose bought one of thefirst: a 4-K Radio Shack TRS -80Model 1. He eventually expanded itwith additional RAM and disk drives,and used it for basic studio manage-ment functions.

When the Macintosh came out,Rose invested in one as a computerboth he and his wife-an advertisingwriter, and then computer-phobe-could share: "Carla hated the TRS -80. It had too many ribbon cablescomingout of it. She didn't want any-thing to do with the TRSDOS com-mands. The Mac seemed like an idealsolution."

He still has his original 128 K Mac,now upgraded to 512 K status and inconstant use as a homework ma-chine by his high -school -aged son.But at the home office, he and hiswife feature a Mac Plus, which shewrites on, and an SE which he usesfor just about every aspect of studiomanagement. Both machines haveGeneral Computer 20 megabyte ex-ternal hard drives.

Two local networks circulatethrough this Electronic Cottage.One, an Appletalk-compatible Faral-lon PhoneNet, connects the twolarger Macs and the 512 to a GC Post-script laser printer.

Another, designed by Rose, uses aserial patch bay with DIN connectorsto route the computers to a modemand dot-matrix printer.

When the Roses renovated theirhouse a few years ago-long beforeany thought of an attic studio-theyburied then unassigned cables inmost of the walls: "I went down to asurplus store and bought a hunk ofrandom wire. We've got telephonequad, RG-59, and a 12 -conductortwisted -pair ribbon running be-tween most of the rooms. It's beenhandy for computers and cable TV,and who knows what we'll use it fornext year. My ten -year -old plays keysand clarinet; maybe he'll want to runMIDI into his bedroom!"

He runs most of the Attic Studio'sbusiness on modular stacks he wrotein Apple's Hypercard program,which also serves as a shell for the

other software he uses. The modulesinclude: a billing program, whichalso computes sales tax reports andaging schedules; a mailing list andclient history database; a mini word -processor and document filing sys-tem; and a daily schedule. Themodules are linked so that, for ex-ample, booking data can be passedfrom the schedule to the invoice, orphone numbers can be captured anddialed while looking at a client's in-voice. Rose also uses Hypercard togenerate a 7,000 -listing sound ef-fects catalog, cross-indexed by key-words.

Other software in the Attic Studioincludes Monogram's Dollars &$ense, for general accounting, T -Maker's Writenow word processor,and Silicon Beach's Superpaint andClick -on Worksheet. Rose also has aFarallon MacRecorder and Soun-dEdit System to generate sound ef-fects on the Mac, and Southword'sMIDI -Paint for SMPTE -linkedsequencing.

cov

Sound Reinforcement inNorth Africa, Part I

ED LEARNED

In the past few months,

I've talked to many fellowengineers who have en-joyed my articles publish-ed in db. In response to

their suggestions, I'm taking a littledifferent slant in this next offeringabout sound in Africa. Rather thanconcentrate on one tour, I'll discussthree different tours of the regionwith zydeco, rock -a -billy, and elec-tric jazz groups.

Between 1985 and 1989, I spentmy winter months as sound engineeron USIA (United States InformationAgency) sponsored tours with threegroups of varied musical style. Thecommon ground between them wasin sonic presentation (all threegroups were "electric") and the itin-erary: North Africa. We visited majorcities in Sudan, Egypt, and Algeriaand travelled extensivelythroughout Morocco and Tunisia.Most of the time we carried our ownsound equipment, but certain toursat certain times required the use oflocally procured equipment. It is in-teresting to note that when we didcarry PA, we used the same systemfor each group. A careful look at thissound system, and our philosophy ofoperation for each group, will revealsome of the planning that made forsuccessful concerts.

THE HOUSE SYSTEMSystem rental expense for USIA

tours had become prohibitively ex-pensive in the mid 1980s, so theagency had purchased a completesystem from the local Washingtonmusic store. The house system wasbased around four Bose 802 cabinetson Ultimate support tripods (see Fig-ure 1), the monitor system on fourPeavey 1245 floor monitors and twoCrest 4001 power amps provided thepower for both mains and monitors.A Soundcraft 200 16 -channel con-sole handled mixing chores. A rackcontaining two MXR 1/3 -octavegraphic equalizers, a DBX 160Xlimiter, and a Bose 802 controllerrounded out the house electronics

package (see Figure 2). A 19 -channel125 -ft. snake was provided for miclines and feeds from the house mixpoint, and there were plenty ofspeaker, AC, and mic cables invarious trunks. The mic complimentconsisted of eight Shure SM-57s and6 SM-58s, with three Whirlwind pas-sive D.I. boxes; fourteen mic standsof varying types were included.There was a cheap VOM and a hand-held Goldline octave-bandwith spec-trum analyzer for test equipment.Three Peavey instrument amplifierswere available if needed. Two Bandit65 guitar -type amps and a TKO 65bass amp provided stage amplifica-tion for our electric instruments. Theentire system shipped in nine roadcases and weighed about 1700pounds.

Power in North Africa is predomi-nantly 220 volt, 50 Hz, so voltagemodification throughout the systemwas called for. The instrument am-plifiers had small 110/220 conver-sion transformers built in; thesecould be by-passed if 110 volt use wasdesired. The Crest power amps hadbeen internally modified for 220 voltuse; the Soundcraft console and DBXlimiter had switchable voltage powersupplies. A small (2.5 amp) trans-former was provided for the rest ofthe 110 volt house electronics, andtwo extra transformers were in-cluded for extraneous stage or soundequipment. No voltage regulationequipment was provided, so theselection of equipment that couldtolerate voltage swings was most im-portant.

A sound system cannot be allthings to all groups, so one of the firstthings I did was establish parametersfor use. USIA believed the systemwould be adequate for rooms of up to1500 people. Considering the electricnature of these three groups, I felt amore realistic appraisal would be1000 people. We agreed that forlarger venues, or outdoor gigs, localPA equipment would be procured toaugment the USIA system. If groupneeds dictated, I would carry along a

few select mica of high caliber. Oncertain tours, I also carried my owneffects devices and limiting. My per-sonal add-ons were limited to onesmall case of no more than 100pounds. I'm sure many sound menwould cringe at the thought of usingfour Bose 802s for an amplifiedgroup in a 1000 -seat hall. We wouldall like to work on a large Meyer orTurbosound PA, but considering thereality of production and transporta-tion costs on a USIA tou4 you workwith what you've got. Co-operationfrom the bands can make all thedifference in the world under thesecircumstances. Part of my advancework for these tours was to contactthe band leader, give a rundown ofthe basic system, and discuss how tomake it work best for that particulargroup. Compromise was always nec-essary.

1985: JAY HOGGARDQUINTET

Jay is one of today's outstandingyoung vibraphonists, equally athome with the traditional and elec-tric forms of jazz (see Figure 3). Hispowerful quintet included PheeroanAldaf, drums; Jerome Harris, elec-tric bass; Vernon Reid, electric gui-tar; and Onaje Allen Gumbs, pianoand synthesizer (see Figure 4). Jayused a Deagan Commander vibra-phone with a pickup system designedby Gilberto Serna of Century MalletInstrument, Chicago Illinois. A con-tact pickup was attached to each barof the vibraphone with an adhesiveputty. Each pickup was then paral-leled onto one of two lines: the firstcontained all the naturals, and thesecond contained only the flats. Jaycombined these with a Y -cord intoone composite signal. This was thenfed into a Korg PME-40X effectsboard, which contained chorus, dis-tortion, and compressor modules.The Korg output was then relayed toJay's stage amplifie4 one of USIA'sBandit 65 guitar amps. This ampused a single 12 -in. speaker in anopen -back enclosure. I mic'd the amp

with an SM-58, pointed directly atthe junction of dome and cone. I alsoinserted a direct box into the line pre -

effects, which gave me both a "dry"and "wet" signal on the vibes. Ourmost immediate problem was ampli-fier distortion. Even with effects by-passed, the sound was distortedbadly when Jay struck the bars withmedium force or greater. After someexperimentation, I found that by in-serting the compressor module firstin line at the effects box, the tran-sients could be effectively reducedwith limiting, eliminating ourbreakup problem. This also gave Jaybetter sustain when the amp was runhotte; something he put to good usein his more electrified compositions!I also gave Jay an SM-58 as a dedi-cated announce mic.

Vernon Reid is now well known tothe American public, thanks to hisrock group Living Colour. As gui-tarist for Jay's group, he usedSteinberg and Gibson Les Paul gui-tars predominantly, carrying an ESPStrat-type guitar for occasional use.He ran the guitar into a wah-wahpedal and a plethora of other effectsboxes, then into the other PeaveyBandit 65 amp. The guitar amp wasmic'ed with an SM-58, placed welloff -center of the speaker, about half-way up the cone, and positionedaround 4 -6 -in. away. With both vibesand acoustic piano to conside4 Ineeded a smoother guitar tone for agood blend. With the natural high -

end boost inherent in SM-58s, Ididn't loose a significant amount ofhighs using this technique, and gotthe warmer sound I was looking for.

Onaje Allan Gumbs played acous-tic piano and DX -7 synthesizer. USIAusually arranged for grand pianos ineach location, but the reality of someplaces dictated otherwise! We de-cided that if a grand was not availa-ble, Onaje would play only the DX -7,so we had something we could de-pend on. I carried my own mics forthe acoustic piano: a Crown PZM-31S and a Sennheiser 421. The PZMwas taped to the side of the piano bythe sound holes and cushioned withfoam to prevent mechanical vibra-tion. The 421 was positioned wherethe low and mid strings cross, angledtowards the hammer and slightlyaway from the open side of the piano.The lid was always on the short stick;gain -before -feedback was improved,yet the piano still had "air." Onaje'sDX -7 was taken direct: he used no

Figure 1. Our Bose 802 speakers are on tripods. Terrence Simien and theMallet Playboys at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence, Khartoum, Sudan.

amplifier, depending on the monitorsystem to hear himself.

Jerome Harris used a Steinbergerelectric bass, run into a Sho-Budvolume pedal. The pedal output fedthe TKO 65, which contained a single15 -in. woofer. I used a D.I. onJerome's instrument, inserted post-

pedal so I could get the fade outs andother effects Jerome created withthis volume pedal.

Pheeroan Aklaff used sonar drumsand Sabian cymbals. His kit con-sisted of kick, snare, three mountedtoms, and a floor tom. Pheeroan'sbass drum had the front head cut out,with foam inside the shell for damp-

ing. Our mic, an AKG 310 thatPheeroan carried with him, wasplaced in a foam cylinder for protec-tion, then laid inside the drum on theshell foam, about 4 -in. from the backhead. The snare was mic'd with anSM-57, positioned just off the rim topick up some hi -hat as well. The threemounted toms were arrayed in a tri-angle, the smallest one above the big-ger two.

The small tom had its head re-moved, so by carefully positioning asingle SM-58 under the small andover the large, I could pick up allthree toms. I used another SM-58 onthe floor torn, and placed my own

Figure 2. Front -of -house gear. My Terrence Simien aux rack is the one ontop.

cD

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Figure 3. On stage at Assuit, Egypt with the Jay Hoggard Quintet.

AKG 451 as an overhead (see Figure5).

All the monitors were run off asingle mix, designed primarily tokick keyboards and vibes back to theband. We found that by placingJerome's bass amp on a case upstageright of Pheeroan's drums, we couldget enough bass back to him acousti-cally; no need for bass in our monitor

mix. I could cover both Jay andJerome with one monitor by anglingJay's wedge slightly. I found I neededto cover the open back of Jay's amp toprevent the vibes from bleeding intothe piano.

We ended up with a bit of dry andwet vibes in the monitors, and, de-pending on the venue, we might adda bit of bass drum.

Figure 4. Stage layout for the Jay Hoggard Quintet.

1988: TERRENCE SIMIAN &THE MALLET PLAYBOYS

Terrance fronts a very hot zydecogroup from Opelousas, Louisiana(see Figure 6). Their tour repertoireincluded several reggae, blues, androck numbers along with cajun andzydeco classics. The group consistedof Terrance on accordions and vo-cals; Sherman Robertson, electricguitar and vocals; Popp Esprite, elec-tric bass; Earl Salley, rub board; andRoy "Chubby" Carrier, Jr. on drums(see Figure 7). Terrance played twodifferent accordions: an Acadian dia-tonic single -row in C, and an Acadiandiatonic triple -row in G, C, or E Thesingle -row had a Shure SM-58 ele-ment mounted to it via a metalbracket; this was taken direct. Weused another SM-58, on a straightmic stand, to pick up the triple -row.For his vocals, I used an E -V DS -35that I carried with me. This mic gaveme superior isolation from thedrums, located directly behind Ter-rance, and allowed me to really crankhis monitor. Terrance used no ampfor his accordions, depending onmonitors for himself. I needed all thegain -before -feedback I could get!

Sherm Robertson played a 1978Gibson 355 electric guitar, with a1962 Fender Jazz Master as back-up.He used one of the two Peavey Bandit

):=1- DJBass amp

DJ

Jerome Haffis(bass)

ti

Drums - Pheeroen AklaffKick - AKG 0-310Snare - Shure SM-57Rack toms - Shure SM-58Floor Tom - Shure SM-58Overhead - AKG 451

DJ

Jay Hoggard(vibes)

Vibes

XANNOUNCE MIC

(SM-58)

MON

Guita=r Amp

)SM-58

Vernon Reid(guitar)

MON

0

65 guitar amps for stage amplifica-tion, although at some of the outdoorgigs he used both. The years had notsmiled on this gear: in mid -tour webegan to have amplifier problems,which led Sherm and I to spend manyhours dealing with on -sight repairs.It's part of the price paid doing thistype of tour. I used one of my E -V ND -757 mics, with a windscreen, hungover his amp and positioned just off -center of the cone. For his vocals, Iused another DS -35 (see Figure 8).

Popp Esprite used a Peavey T-40bass guitai modified with Fendertuning pegs. He favored PeaveyGlider bass strings, a rock-and-rollset. He used the Peavey TKO bassamp for stage amplification, and Itook a direct signal off the line outputof the amplifier rather than off theinstrument itself. Popp would in-frequently sing. We worked it out forhim to share Terrance's mic when hedid.

Earl Salley played the rub board,one of the more interesting instru-ments I'd ever had to deal with.There are two of them. Each wasshaped like a vest and worn overEarl's chest. Earl played these byscraping over the ridges with a set ofspoons, creating rhythmic patternsto add propulsion to the music. Oneof the boards had more ridges perinch than the othe4 giving it a densersound. One thing I can tell you: it wasincredibly loud! I almost never had tomic it, save for outdoor shows orwhen I taped a concert. When I didmic it (using a Shure 3M-58), I kept itdown in the mix because it bled intoeverything. When Earl was featured,we had him move to the triple -rowaccordion mic and play into that, asTerrance usually didn't play that in-strument when Earl soloed.

Roy Carrier Jr., known to all asChubby, used a Ludwig rock drumset. His compliment included a22x16 kick, a 14x6 I/42 snare, 12x13and 13x14 mounted toms, and a16x16 floor tom. Zildjian 13 -in. NewBeat hi -hats, a 16 -in. rock crash, anda 22 -in. rock ride were used for cym-bals. Terrance wanted a big drumsound, and I had the channels tospare, so I fully mic'd the drums. Ibrought most of the drum mics withme, with a USIA SM-57 on the snare.I used an E -V RE -20 on the kick, laidon a towel and placed inside the drumabout halfway back. E -V ND -757mics were used for hi -hat, mounted

Figure 5. Mic'ing Pheeroan Aklaffs drum. set.

toms, and floor tom. If I used an over-head, it was another 757.

By this time, a Yamaha REV -7 dig-ital reverb had been added to theUSIA system in deference to theneeds of the 80s. Since we would tourAlgeria and Morocco without theUSIA system, I brought along anauxiliary rack containing a YamahaSPX -90 II, an SPX -90, and two dbx-903 limiters in a dbx two -space rack.I use the REV -7 for vocals, the SPX -90s for instruments and drums. Onseveral tunes, I used SPX pitchchange programs to create vocal orguitar harmonies, an effect Terrancefell in love with. The two limiters

were channel patched on the twovocal channels, so I could controllevels much more easily. The groupused a single monitor mix for all fourwedges. This mix contained Ter-rance's vocal and accordions on top,with Sherman's vocal a hair under.We might add just a touch of snare inreverberant halls to facilitate time-keeping, and that was it! When Sher-man felt he needed more guitar levelon stage, we would angle his ampmore towards him. For several out-door shows, we even added our extraamplifier so Sherm had two amps toplay through. When we did go withtwo, I made sure they were angled

Figure 6. Terrence Simien and the Mallet Playboys at Ewart Hall, Ameri-can University, Cairo, Egypt.

XSM-58

(if needed)

Earl Salley(rubboard)

MON

Bass amp

Fk\DJ

Popp Esprite(bass)

Drums - Roy "Chubby" Carrier Jr.Kick- EV RE -20Snare - Shure SM-57Hi -Hat - EV NO -757Rack Toms - EV NO -757Floor Tom - EV NO -757Overhead - EV NO -757

XAccordion Mic

SM-58

Terrance Simien(accordion)

XVocalSM-58

lJMON

DJAccordion

)1MON Guitar amp Extra guitar ampEV NO -757 (if needed)

)= FkSherman Robertson

(guitar)

XVocalSM-58

\C(MON

Figure 7. Stage Layout for Terrence Sinzien and the Mallett Playboys.

slightly away from the accordionmics to minimize stage level bleedproblems.

1989: THE SUN RHYTHMSECTION

This group is composed of formerstudio musicians and recording ar-tists with Sun Records of Memphis,the label known for launching ElvisPresley (see Figure 9). Their reper-toire included rock -a -billy and earlyrock-and-roll classics, played by the

Figure 8. Sherman Robertsonworks out! Notice the guitar nzi-crophone hanging on the ampli-fier.

a,coa),-45

000ir)JoEa>

aa)(/)

VNit)

men who originated the sounds inthe first place. The group was com-posed of Sonny Burgess, electric gui-tar and vocals; Paul Burlison, electricguitar; Marcus Van Story, harmon-ica, acoustic guitar, slap bass, and vo-cals; Jerry Lee "Smoochy" Smith,electric piano; Stan Kesler, electricbass; and D.J. Fontana, drums (seeFigure 10). Paul played a Fender Tel-ecaster, Sonny a Gibson. Sonny alsoused an overdrive box, which enabledhim to get a very nasty tone, an effecthe used for soloing on certain songs. Imic'd their amps with Shure SM-57s,hung from the amplifier's handlesand positioned dead center on thespeaker. I'd brought a small assort-ment of E -V mics along with me onthis tour. I used an ND -757, with awindscreen, on Sonny's vocal,

Marcus Van Story played severaldifferent instruments during thecourse of our shows, and each posed adifferent challenge. For vocals andharmonica, I used an ND -757 withwindscreen. For Marcus' acousticguitar and slap bass, another ND -757 was employed, this time withoutthe windscreen. I was very con-cerned about getting his acoustic in-struments audible over the electricinstruments, but I needn't haveworried. Marcus' guitar was mostlyas prop: the band didn't want itheard! The slap bass was used as aneffect: Stan told me the importantpart of the sound was the slap of thestrings against the fingerboard. I'dbrought along a Yamaha 2031 stereo

1/3 -octave graphic EQ, and used oneside of it, via a channel patch, on theslap bass. I could roll off the lows andcertain mid frequencies, leavingeverything else that enhanced theslap sound.

Bassist Stan Kesler played a vin-tage Fender Precision through thePeavey TKO bass amp. I took himdirect, using the line output of theamplifier; this provided the bottomend the slap bass could not. With hisrecording engineer's experience,Stan was able to offer many tips onhow the group should sound. I no-ticed that Stan's playing dynamicswere all over the place. As I again car-ried my two DBX 903 limiters, I in-serted one on the bass channel. Thissmoothed out his levels enough togive us a rich, very consistent basslevel.

Pianist Smoochy Smith was accus-tomed to acoustic pianos in the U.S.,but, in deference to our travel situa-tion and the state of pianos in NorthAfrica, he agreed to use the YamahaPF-85 electronic piano that was partof the USIA sound system. Thispiano had a small amp and twospeakers built-in, very important be-cause we didn't have another amp tospare for the piano. I'd used this in-strument on a previous tout andknew that the on -board amplifica-tion was not going to cut it for an elec-tric band. I planned on givingSmoochy his own monitor mix,something I was able to do only bybringing along another graphic. The

PF-85 was run direct, with a DBX903 inserted in the channel for con-trol and gain. I could give Smoochy asmuch piano as he wanted withoutkilling the other guys. I used an ND -757, with windscreen, for Smoochy'svocals.

D.J. Fontana is perhaps best knownas the drummer with the originalElvis Presley group. Most drummersI'd worked for on USIA tours carriedtheir own sets. Not D.J.-he electedto pick up a set in each country. Ad-vance cables confirmed this would bepossible everywhere except Sudan. Adrum set had been located, but theheads were in unplayable shape. Wehad to buy heads to fit this set in theU.S. and bring them with us, as musicstores in Sudan aren't known fortheir wide selection of equipment!My generic mic'ing for D.J. included

Figure 9. The Sun Rhythm Section, Tunis, Tunisia.

Jerry Lee"Smoochy" Smith

(piano)

Bass ampDJ

Stan Kesler(bass)

-o71Co0

XVocal

EV NO -757

#2MON

#2I(MON

XSlap bass

EV NO -757

DJ Fontanna - DrumsKick - RE -20Snare - SM-57Overhead (left) - SM-57Overhead (r*ght) - SM-57

Marcus Van Story(slap bass, accoustic guitar, harp)

XVocal

EV NO -757

#1

MON

Guitar amp Guitar ampSM-57 SM-57

Sonny Burgess(guitar)

VocalEV NO -757

LJ#1

MON

Paul Burlison(guitar)

Figure 10. Stage Layout for the Sun Rhythm Section.

an E -V RE -20 on the kick, an SM-57on the snare, and two SM-57s foroverheads, positioned in such a wayas to pick up more toms than cym-bals.

Monitor requirements for the SunRhythm Section were dictated by ourpiano listen situation. Smoochyneeded his piano loud to hear it , yetthis level was unacceptable to theother musicians. I used the open

channel of my Yamaha graphic ashouse EQ. This freed up the twoMXR graphics for two monitormixes. Mix number 1, assigned toSonny, Paul, and Marcus, containedSonny's and Marcus' vocals on top.with Smoochy's vocal just underthem. They also wanted piano:enough to hear but well under the vo-cals. Mix number 2 was assigned toSmoochy and D.J. This mix con-

tained loud piano and Smoochy'svocal, with the other two vocalsmixed under the piano and pianovocal.

I usually placed D.J.'s wedgefurther away from him to avoidexcess piano bleed into the drummics. The other three were on top ofthe respective singers they covered.

(More next issue.)

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JOHN BARILLA

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Hot Tips For Akai 12 -track Users

In the early 1970s a noted jazzmusician, who had done much topopularize the Fender Rhodes elec-tric piano, was asked in a magazineinterview what he thought of the in-strument. The interviewe4 who I'msure expected a word of unqualifiedpraise for the instrument, receivedinstead a rather cryptic answer. Themusician's reply went somethinglike this: "The Fender Rhodes? Ohyeah, nice idea. Too bad they neverfinished it."

Somehow I never forgot that quote.Back then I too had been an itinerantmusician, lugging my Fender Rhodesfrom gig to gig, up and down the eastcoast. I identified with that musi-cian's ambivalence towards whatwas then considered to be a wonder-fully expressive but quirky new in-strument.

I'll also never forget how manyhours I spent adjusting the tines-the steel rods that vibrated over amagnetic pickup to create the uniquesound-only to have one break in themiddle of my best solo. That, ofcourse, was not an unusual event,but a periodic occurrence that

Rhodes players just learned to put upwith for the sheer joy of playing sucha responsive instrument. It seemed avalid trade-off.

What has all this got to do with theAkai 12-12 and 12-14? Well, somefifteen years after my love affair withthe Fender Rhodes piano, my currentpassion is for this marvelous 12-channel, 12 -track mixer/tape re-corder. But my feelings for the twounits are quite equivalent: Over-whelming amounts of love, pride,and loyalty, alloyed with sufficientannoyance to make me want to re -quote that famous jazz musician:"The Akai 12 -track? Oh yeah, niceidea. Too bad they never finished it."

But lest you think that I'm about tolaunch out on some criticism, let mestate this out front: While the Akaihas its quirks, all of them are sur-mountable and definitely worth theeffort. It's difficult to imagine howyou could purchase a more pro-fessional sounding multi -track foranything in this price range. Forunder $6,000 (actual market price)you can have 12 tracks of very highquality analog audio (94 dB S/N ratio

with built-in dbx Type I noise reduc-tion). Since they have a hidden timecode track, all twelve tracks can beutilized for your program. And twoAkai 12-14s can be linked togetherwith something like a Fostex4030/4035 Synchronizer to give you,at about $14,000, probably theworld's least -expensive, self-con-tained 24 -track recording studio. Allin all judged by any standard-theAkai 12 -track is still an incrediblysweet-smelling deal. But the rosedoes have a few thorns.

Another Akai user I know had aconversation with one of the Ja-panese engineers who designed theunit, and confronted him about thesethorns. The engineer was rathercavalier about the issue, saying thatone had to be "brave" to operate theAltai 12. In other words, it was not atool for the timid. You had to be a realaficionado to get the most from it. Ihave found that to be absolutely true.After operating my Akai 12-12 forfour years, I have learned throughperseverance, trial-and-erro4 andconsultation just how to get the Akai

EDITORIAL CORRECTION!

We apologize for a puzzling bit of text in our July/ August issue in John Barilla's Hot Tips For The Home Studio.Re-garding item #4, "DIY Headphone Distribution Box," the resistor designations in the text do notagree with the desig-nations in the circuit diagram. Originally, they did agree, but the diagram was a re -labeled in order to make it morereadable. Unfortunately, the text was not changed to comply. The circuit diagram is correct, but the text should read asfollows (third column, second paragraph):

"The variable resistor (potentiometer) R3-4 controls the level of the sound to each set of headphones. For convenience,the left and right sides are ganged together on a concentric shaft so that both sides go up or down in volume by turninga single knob. R1 and R2 are thrown in just to make sure there is always sufficient resistance to prevent the amp from

Trin shorting to ground-even when the variable wiper R3-4 is all the way up, hence functioningas a straight wire."

Tape retainerFigure 1. The Akaicassette.

Release button

1 of "six nipples'

12 to function as a reasonably pre-dictable and stable recording device.

CASSETTE PROBLEMS?Show me an Akai user who hasn't

encountered a bum cassette, and I'llshow you a person who doesn't re-cord very often. I have hit a numberof these problem cassettes and I'llwager that you have too. You knowhow it is. They seem to operatesmoothly at first, but as your sessiongoes on they start making weirdnoises on rewind or fast -forward,even worse they bind up. What do youdo then? You can despaii throw thetape out and start from scratch. Oryou can be "brave," open up the shell,and try to figure out what's hangingthe thing up.

The initial reaction of the neophyteAkai user to this annoyance is, "Whythe @#%* should I have to do thatfor?" I can't answer that question.Let's just say it's a fact of life. Accord-ing to IMC, the exclusive AmericanDistributor for Akai products, theproblem is with the quality control inthe manufacturing process. Ap-parently Akai tried manufacturingthemselves, then tried using someTaiwanese subcontractors whoproved to be unsatisfactory. Now thecassettes are being manufactured inJapan once again. The official stanceis that, design -wise and manufactur-ing -wise, the problem has been (morelikely, is currently being) ironed out.Nonetheless, complaints of defectivecassettes keep rolling in.

In my first encounter with thisproblem, I was more than 100 hoursinto the project-ready for a mix-when the cassette began to malfunc-tion. At first I panicked and cursedthe day I bought the Akai. Then Iopened up the shell and startedpoking around. I got it to work and

Locking mechanism

finished the mix with no furtherproblems. Still, at that point, I wasn'tsure of the exact chain of cause andeffect. Which of the dozen things I didreally turned the trick? It took a fewmore close encounters and some hy-pothesizing and testing to come upwith the following theory and treat-ment. But it works every time. Nomore panic.

My theory is this: The Akai is a ma-chine that normally runs hot. Pull aeaggette out of the transport after anhour's use and you can feel how muchwarmth the plastic shell has ab-sorbed. Thankfully it's not enough todo any harm to the tape, but aftersome hours of operation it seems thatit may be enough to ever -so -slightlydeform the shell. Since the toler-ances are pretty tight and the shell isbeing pulled together by the screwsthat hold it, this slight inward defor-mation may be enough to cause abinding of the tape. All this wouldprobably never cause a problem if thetolerances between the reels and theshell were subject to sufficient qu-ality control, but obviously they havenot quite finished that aspect of thedesign. Nevertheless, if you do en-counter a defective ragskte, in mostcases it can be permanently re-medied with a simple procedure.Here's how I approach the problem.

1. The first echelon of treatment issimply to take a break and let the tapechill out. Loosening the screws a bitand letting it sit in a cool place suchas right in the path of an air condi-tioner may be all you need to save theday.

2. More persistent cases may requireminor surgery If you are in a hurry, itmay be sufficient simply to exchangethe shell of the troubled cassette withanother one. The permanent cure,

Tape path

Outer shell

Gear -like teeth

Raceway (under reels)

howevei involves a couple of moresteps:A. Remove all the screws from thecassette and press the release buttonon the left side of the shell to open itup.B. Remove the reels from shell. Get asmall piece of fine abrasive paper(emory cloth is fine). Turn the reelsover and buff the burrs off the back ofthe serrated flange (the gear -like sur-face). (See Figure 1.) Apparently theextrusions are not perfect here, andgently planing them helps the reel tospin more smoothly in the racewayprovided by the shell. It's a good ideato smooth out this raceway as well,since the burrs may have worn somepits in the surface. Finally, lightlysmooth the six little nipples on thefront of the reel. Don't take down thelarge center one at all (this is just theaxle that the reel spins on), justslightly round off and even out the sixnipples that surround it.C. At this point you may have someplastic dust trapped between the tapeand the inside of the flange. Have alittle can of compressed air on hand(you know, the stuff that pho-tographers always use), and simplyblow out all the particles. No problemat all. It's really a whizz-or should Isay, a gas.D. Put the thing back together andyou should have a hassle -free cassettefrom now on.

THERMAL PROBLEMS?If you run a 12-12 or a 12-14 in a

small room for long periods of timeyou may encounter some weird er-rors in the logic of the machine. Per-haps it refuses to load or unload thetape, or has trouble counting, or itmight not want to record or play-back. Almost any enigmatic phe-nomenon can happen to a control

coin

Figure 2. "Doctor" Harry Barber performing surgery on an Akai 12-12.

function. Often simply pushing thereset button will restore everything.That failing, it might be time to takea lunchbreak to give Mr. Akai achance to relax and cool off his hothead.

I found out the cause of this eccen-tric behavior from my Akai techni-cian. Apparently, the power supplyfor the unit-a potent heat pro-ducer-is located right under theCPU (the central processing unit)which controls all logic functions. It'snot really an ideal location, but itbeats putting it near a channel line(where it might induce hum), or nearthe tape transport (where it couldbulk -erase your tape). There's only

so much room in a self-containedmixer/recorder unit, so they probablymade a prudent engineering com-promise. Unfortunately, nobodybothered installing a fan there either.So if you operate your Akai in hotweather, in a room that is not air con-ditioned, you may encounter someweird behavior.

There are several things that canbe done to alleviate this nuisance.Raise the unit off the table so air cancirculate underneath. This is an ab-solute necessity. It's even better ifyou remove those pretty wooden railson either side of the console. Wood isan insulator, retaining heat. Whenthe metal chassis is left exposed, it

Model Adams -Smith Zeta 3

MG12-12

MG12-14

MG -14D

Reads SMPTE in fastmode.Does not requiretach-pulse

Requires simple modifi-cation. 1 hr. + parts:Approx. $50-70 total

No mod required

No mod required

Fostex 4030

Requires tach-pulse.Does not read SMPTEin fast mode

Requires installation ofadditional parts andalignment by tech experi-enced on the MG. 3-4 hrs.+ parts (including 15 pinD sub): Approx. $350 total

Same as above, except for15 pin D sub:Approx. $350 total

No mod required

acts more as a heat sink, draining theheat off into the air. Those two itemswill probably allow you to do more ex-tended sessions without problems.Installation of a small whisper -typefan would probably be an all aroundperfect solution. I am sure it wouldincrease the longevity of the unit aswell.

SOME SIMPLEMODIFICATIONS

Speaking of longevity, the capstanmotor will last a lot longer if you canshut it off when you are not record-ing. Probably a good 50-60 percent oftime spent in the studio today in-volves auditioning sounds or build-ing a sequencer pattern-eq.sentiallytapeless functions. Having the cap-stan in motion during all that timecan contribute to an early burnout. Ifyou are fairly electronically com-petent, you can probably insert a by-pass switch yourself on the powerlead to the motor. If you have any res-ervations about pulling your ma-chine apart (or if it's still underwarranty), it's best to have anauthorized technician do the workfor you. Here in New York, I'mblessed to have an excellent Altai doc-tor who makes house calls. (See tech-nician Harry Barber performingsurgery on my 12-12 in Figure 2.)

Another useful modification is afootswitchable punch -in button.(The unit has a remote, but it makesno provision for a footswitch. Key-board players may get by, but gui-tarists will be out of luck withoutone.) Fortunately, this is anotherrelatively inexpensive mod that canbe done by a service technician or theuser. If you are going to work on theAkai yourself, it would pay to pur-chase a service manual. It's availablethrough:

IMC, International Music Com-pany, 1316 E. Lancaste4 Fort Worth,Texas 76102. Telephone: (817) 336-5114.

TIPS AND TRICKS WITH THEAKAI 12

Enough has been said about howthe Akai 12 could be improved. Mostof the things it claims to do, it does ex-tremely well. Such as recordingsound, for example. Isn't that theraison d'etre for a tape recorder?Despite the storms in the relation-ship, I am still very much in love withmy 12-12. The romance seems to in-

tensify every time I hear one of mytapes next to stuff from other elec-tronic cottages. Even when com-pared to recordings from veryexpensive studios, the Akai holds itsown quite well. In a word, it soundspro. The highs are there, the lows arethere, and the signal-to-noise ratio isalmost as good as it can be for ananalog recorder.

Where the tips and tricks come in isin Akai's mixer section. It's really apretty versatile board-especiallyconsidering what you usually get onmost mixer/recorder combo units.There are an awful lot of things it cando that is not clearly defined in themanual.

For example, the Solo Enable but-ton also has a nice side effect. Oncepushed, it inhibits anything otherthan the previously -chosen track(s)from going into record-a nice fea-ture if you tend to be a klutz.

Another nice thing is that while itdoes have one stereo and one monosend (both having stereo returns),the monitor send (called Track Sendin Akai parlance because it monitorsdirectly off the tracks) can be used asan additional Stereo Send or twoMono Sends during mixdown.This-Track Out (Left and Right)-can be patched into whatever effectdevice or devices you choose andmanually patched back into the mixat a patch point called Auxiliary In(Left and Right). I have two monodelay lines I patch into the left andright track sends. Having discreteunits for left and right can be realhelpful in recreating stereo imagesfrom monaural tracks during mix -down.

Another really nice trick I recentlylearned from Andy Burgess-the re-igning Akai specialist from IMC'sengineering department. The Akai,although limited to twelve recordedtracks, is capable of functioning as a24 -channel mixer.

Here's how. Your recorded trackswill be mixed from the track monitor(as if you were doing an overdub)patched from Track Out (Left andRight) directly into the Auxiliary In(Left and Right). If you have pre-viously striped the time code, younow can run twelve channels of

Figure 3.The author in his Akai-based studio.

sequenced sounds into the channelline inputs of the board. The twelvelive sequenced channels will now runsynchronously and be mixed with thetwelve pre-recorded tracks. Send Bwill provide an effects loop for thetracks (just push the track button oneach channel's individual Send Bcontrol), and, of course, Send A willprovide an effects loop for the incom-ing live sounds. For folks who do a lotof virtual tracking and don't want torun out and buy a sub-mixe4 this isreally the way to go.

A LETTER FROM ANDYFinally, I asked Andy Burgess, if

there was any advice he would like togive Akai users. I will duplicate a por-tion of his reply as follows:

"Please advise users to thoroughlyclean all of the heads, guides, andpins that the tape contacts when run-ning. Be careful not to bend the back -tension arm. Cleaning of the pinch -roller and capstan -pin is especially

important. Don't be afraid to scrubthe heads and guides, etc. Place your -thumb behind Q -tip, but don't overdo it! If machine is used daily, cleanand demagnetize daily. Never ener-gize or de -energize a demagnetizercloser than 24 inches (60 cm) to theheads. Ensure that the tape machineis switched off.

"There is some confusion concern-ing the synchronization of two ormore MGs or a VTR and an MG. Theconsiderations vary from model tomodel, the most important aspectbeing, will the synchronizer readSMPTE in fast mode or does it rely ona tach-pulse when the transport isshuttling? The MGs will not sync to-gether without the control of an in-telligent interface! Below is a chartindicating the requirements for eachMG and two popular synchronizers.

"I hope there is some useful mate-rial here. U.0

Zei.01441 Teeits+0.BRUCE BARTLETT I

AES WORKSHOP: THE STATE OF THE ART OF REMOTE RECORDING

How do the pros handle remoterecordings and broadcasts? A work-shop was held on this subject at the1988 Convention of the Audio En-gineering Society in Los Angeles.

Why should we do remote record-ings? This question was answered byXanobia Villet, the organizer of theworkshop: The right sound and agood musical feeling can't always beachieved in a studio. You may need alarge venue. It may be more con-venient to have the participantsmeet at a particular venue than at astudio. As Guy Charbonneau says, ifa band likes playing in a warehouse,they'll play better music there, andbetter music makes better sound.

In the remainder of this article,comments from each participanthave been paraphrased and editedfor clarity. I've tried carefully to pre-serve the original intent, but if any-one's meaning has beenmisrepresented here, please sendyour corrections to db.

ERRATA

In the July/August issue in myarticle on sound at the SpecialOlympics, I neglegted to list WhiteInstruments as a donor of equip-ment. We appreciate theirgenerosity for this worthy cause.

JOHN FASARANO, STUDIOON WHEELS, GLENDALE,CALIFORNIA

I take my remote truck to musici-ans' homes and plug into the facili-ties there. This is convenient formusicians who don't want to disas-semble their home MIDI setups. Ipull up and tie into their homes' ACpanel. Two trucks are used: a half -semi, or a van with a cube on theback.

Broadcast remotes are lesscommon these days

because they cost so much.

Equipment in the small truck in-cludes a Spectra-Sonics 28 -inputconsole and an M79 recorder. Equip-ment in the large truck includes anAmek 40 -input console, Ampex 1200recorders, and distribution amps forsatellite feeds. Both trucks also haveeffects, Yamaha NS -10M monitors,JBL monitors, 36 microphones, andsix limiters (1176 and dbx).

To prevent ground loops and hum,I usually don't connect ground on theAC power. This solves 80 percent ofthe hum problems. I also flip theground lifts or run AC into the house,and have them plug into that.

The recorder runs at 30 in./sec.,with a +5 or +6 recording level.

The control room in the truck is anLEDE design by the Record Plant.Although the truck has no acousticstudio built in, I have recorded vocals

in the control room. This is some-times done without headphones byusing close mic'ing. Vocals can alsobe recorded in a quiet room in thehouse, with blankets on the walls. Mytalkback mic goes to their head-phones or to their stereo system.

I run a 27 -pair snake and 3-waysplitters with ground lifts. (I madeone splitter with Jensen trans-formers and bought one from WallyHeider.) Setup takes as little as fiveminutes.

My rate for the large truck, liveconcerts, dual machines, is $1800 aday; and for a single machine is$1500 a day. Recording sessions are$500 a day for the large truck, $300 aday for the small one. Mixdown isusually done in the truck.

MICHAEL CALLAHAN, KIS-FM

Mr. Callahan is chief engineer ofMS -FM, an SBE-certified AM/FMbroadcast engineer, and a teacher inthe California Community Collegedistrict. He developed and taught theSBE certification course, and is awriter for Radio World_Newspaperand Broadcast Engineering ma-gazine.

His comments follow.

Broadcast remotes are less com-mon these days because they cost somuch. Early remotes were of musicalshows, such as a live band playing ina hotel. Today, we take the DJs on theroad, and they do their programsfrom a remote location.

One type of remote is the DROP -IN. During the regular program,someone calls in on a telephone andsays, "Here I am at..." and we putthem on the air. Since this is not high -quality audio, it is avoided.

Another type is the VOICE -ONLYremote. The DJ in the field does in-tros, outros, and comments; while allthe music is played at the radio sta-tion.

Still another type of remote iscalled VOICE PLUS BITS. The DJtakes a cart and a cassette recorderto play stereo material along with hisor her voice. Back -haul channelssend the radio program to the remoteif it is out of the broadcast range.

In a MIX -MINUS remote, we sendall of the program to the DJ excepthis voice; the DJ can hear the pro-gram but not himself. This is neces-sary because of transmission delays.At the remote site is a console withdrop -ins and mics. The crowd at theremote listens to a P.A. system play-ing the DJ's console audio and thestation's music. A communicationline from the station (containingcomments from station engineers)goes to the DJ's headphones. In thestudio, the audition channel (con-taining music) feeds to the programchannel. The DJ listens only to theaudition channel (as shown in Figure1).

Four methods are used to get re-mote audio to the studio:

1. A dial -up telephone.2. Leased loops (for example, you

ask for an 8 kHz loop from 8 a.m to 12p.m., ready for testing Friday morn-ing).

3. Microwave (which is relativelyinexpensive).

4. Satellite (which is good for dis-tant broadcasts. It has a 60 dB S/Nratio with companding).

To broadcast from cars or boats, weuse cellular phones. Unfortunately,they are less reliable than hard wires.

A 5 kHz bandwidth for sports an-nouncing on am radio is adequateand inexpensive. For fm we use an 8or 15 kHz line. A non -equalized lineis a last resort. It helps if you addcompanding noise reduction to thephone line.

A stereo remote is expensive.Phase matching of the two channelsrequires similar routing of the tworemote lines; otherwise you get inter -channel delay. It costs $300 to phase

each end. Telephone stereo pairsmay take two days to set up. In astereo pair, you may be given bothterrestrial and satellite channels. Itthis happens, hang up and try again.

To check the line, put tones, afrequency sweep, or pink noise at thesending end. Check polarity with a100 Hz tone or a pulse generator.

The phone company might uselines on which they hear no signal. Toprevent the phone company fromusing your line, keep audio on it. Youcan use Morse Code, or a cart ma-chine continuously playing a mes-sage stating your location. You couldalso use DAK's solid-state devicesthat play several seconds of a digitalrecording.

A satellite remote link isexpensive. It may cost$17,000 for a feed from

Disney World, or $26,000 fora feed from London.

For microwave links we use para-bolic antennas with remote antennarotors. The Street program for IBMcomputers has proven useful inaiming the antennas: It. gives the dis-tance and direction from your geo-graphic location to another.

At the microwave receiving end is avariable -frequency oscillator (VFO)controlled by the signal strength. Werun its tone through the phone linesand listen on the sending end. Thenwe rotate the antennas until we hearthe highest pitch; and then both thesending and receiving antennas areaimed at each other. On some occa-sions we have used mountains forpassive reflectors.

A satellite remote link is expensive.It may cost $17,000 for a feed fromDisney World, or $26,000 for a feedfrom London. The satellite transmis-sion causes a delay.

Preparation is extremely impor-tant for remotes. Have a check -offlist with such items as a flashlight,digital clock, station banner, dial tel-ephone, and fax machine (say, to getsports from the L.A. Times).

GUY CHARBONNEAU,PRODUCER AND OWNER OFLE MOBILE, HOLLYWOOD

Having done live recording since1973, Guy has done location record-ing in North America from 1975 tothe present with the Le Mobile truck.He also did record projects and TVand radio programs. His clients in-clude NBC, HBO, Van Halen, andnumerous other artists. Guy has thisto say about his operation:

Le Mobile is a truck with a 25 -ft.longbox. It's a control room I bring tomusicians. The truck is lined withlead sheet to make it more solidacoustically.

Equipment includes a modified 30 -input Neve 8058 console with NecamII automation. The transformer -input Neve sounds great and savesground troubles. I use a TAC sub -mixer for the crowd and keyboards.Other equipment includes 2 -trackand 4 -track Studers, EMT 250 re -verb, Yamaha REV 7 and SPX 90,gates, delays, TC sampler, EventideHarmonize4 and JBL, Yamaha NS -10M, and Tannoy loudspeakers.

I record at a level of 250 nw (+3) at15 in./sec. with Dolby SR noise reduc-tion. I listen 6 feet from the mainspeakers and also use close -fieldmonitoring.

The truck uses 3 -phase, filtered,240 V power with a 25 kVA trans-former having six different taps. Idon't use the neutral; it carries a lotof current from lighting systems.The truck chassis is grounded. I useno ground lifts 99 percent of thetime; I carry through the shield withthe sound company. In some clubs, Ibring 50 amps to the stage on a 220 Vline with a distribution box. All the

Figure 1. The setup for a mix -minus remote.

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musicians' instruments and the clubconsole plug in there. This preventsground loops and AC line noises fromcoffee machines and dishwashers.When working with a big P.A. com-pany, I just ask for their split. Often aY -adapter works.

It's risky on the road, so get a con-tract and a 50 percent deposit beforedoing a recording session. It helps toget a fax of the input list.

For Van Halen I have used 30 drummics and eight guitar mics on oneman. I plan in advance with thesound technician or the musician,working out the inputs and planningsubgroups. I often use all 60 inputs.

Lately, I pull the truck alongside abuilding with two or three rehearsalrooms. I record the band's full set onthe last day of rehearsal. When theygo to full production on stage, thetape can be replayed as often asdesired for TV -cue practices withoutwearing out the musicians.

I also use Le Mobile myself to pro-duce others. I bring the client to aplace (say, a living room or garage)where they feel right doing theirmusic. It's an interesting challenge.

I know what I'm going to hear inthis truck; I know the equipment.The main variable is the recordingroom.

Preventive maintenance on thetruck itself is important. I clean theequipment cards and look for loosewires. Also, I ask people not to smokearound the equipment to preventgetting smoke particles in theswitches.

For a live broadcast, a telephonetechnician gives me a wire pair andsays "Here's your feed." I tie it to thetruck and feed to the radio stationwith a cellular phone or phone line. Itest for polarity and play a tone. Inthe first 30 seconds of a feed, I listento a mono TV or radio playing my re-mote. If I hear a weak signal or justreverb, one channel is out -of -phase. Ihave a patch cord ready to fix it.

I compress the bus for a phone line,and often cut EQ instead of boosting.I may boost 5 to 10 kHz a little to

Free FederalConsumer Information Catalog.

Dept. RW, Pueblo, Colorado 81009

compensate for phone -line losses. Imatch the truck's direct -monitoredsignal with the TV audio. My audio issent at -2 level, not 0, for a little moreheadroom.

It's best to use two trucks for mul-tiple stages (one truck per client).

Here's a tip: To make certain in-struments effectively louder in themix, try cutting the level of too -loudinstruments, rather than boostingquiet ones. Another tip: use a smalllive room, not a big one, to get a bigdrum sound.

RON STREICHER, REMOTERECORDING ENGINEER

Ron does remote recordings by set-ting up equipment at the site, ratherthan using a truck. He's done broad-cast remotes, classical albums, re-cordings in Pakistan, and digitalprojects in Russia. Here are his com-ments.

In my primary mic kit I havenine Schoeps preamps with26 capsules, four AKGs, twoNeumanns, two stereo mics,

and a Calrec Soundfieldmicrophone.

The four words any remote en-gineer hates to hear when arriving atthe gig are, "Oh, by the way .." It's alldownhill from there! The most im-portant part of any remote is pre-planning, but invariably your planswill change when you get there.

The first thing to do when you un-pack is to measure the AC power: testthe polarity, ground, and voltage.Hold a de -tuned radio next to the out-let to check for buzzes. Use a 2:1 or1:1 transformer, a variac, EMI andRFI filters, surge protection, and anammeter to know if you're gettingnear the circuit limits.

To improvise a mic stand, takesome Atlas AD -6 tubes (with a mic-stand adapter on both ends) and at-tach it with gaffer tape to anythinghigh.

Take your own cables so you'llknow they'll work. Have a patch cordfor flipping polarity. Also take anadapter kit, twice as many cables asyou thinkyou'll need, and filtered ACpower strips. You have to take extrasin ("2 Re something goes wrong.

To feed Telco lines, I use a box thatdrives +18 dBm into a short. It hastransformers, termination switches,polarity switches, binding posts, andXLRs.

Especially for international travel,make sure your documentation is upto date and matches the equipmentyou're carrying. Make a list of every-thing you take: all the details, such aseach pencil, razor blade, connector,etc.

Also make sure your insurance isup to date. You need insurance for en -route as well as at the destination.

In past remotes, I used one tapemachine and cued the conductor tostall while I changed reels! Now withdigital recording, I can get two tothree hours per roll of tape.

I organize my cases so I knowwhere every item is. They're ready togo anytime and make setup muchfaster. The cables are packed withtheir associated equipment, not in acables case. I check everything com-ing and going, and try to have 100percent redundancy, such as a smallmixer to substitute for the large con-sole.

In my primary mic kit I have nineSchoeps preamps with 26 capsules,four AKGs, two Neumanns, twostereo mics, and a Calrec Soundfieldmicrophone.

I use a Sony PCM-F1 with twotransports, rolling two tapes at atime because of dropouts. I also run aDAT backup and a double cassettemachine for the client's copy.

For more information on remotes(such as logistics and paperwork),refer to Streicher's AES preprint2155.

We need you.WERE FIGHTING FOR

`OUR LIFE

American HeartAssociation0

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BRENT HARSHBARGER

A.44, eltva

One of the most misunderstoodsubjects in church audio is themic'ing of a choir or ensemble. Firstwe'll review some of the basics of mi-crophone technique. Then we'll lookat practical choir mic'ing based onthese principles.

BACK TO THE BASICSFirst, let's review the differences

between omni-directional and uni-directional (usually referred to asdirectional) patterns. The micro-phone's polar patterns are best un-derstood with a visual illustration soyou can see the pick-up patterns (seeFigure 1). You can determine the bestmicrophone for the application i f youunderstand how to read the polar re-sponse of a microphone. You'll noticein Figure 1 that the pick-up patternof the Omni -directional mic is a 360degree uniform pattern. It picks upno matter which side of it you stand,and as long as you are facing it, youwill have the same level.

Looking at the cardiod mic in Fig-ure 1, you will notice that it has onlyhalf the pick-up pattern of the omni-directional. If you stand at the 0 axisyou will have optimum gain, but ifyou stand at the rear (180 degrees),you will have minimal gain.

Some polar patterns show youseveral different frequencies, ena-bling you to get a better idea of thetrue over-all pick-up pattern. Thereason for this, is a microphone mayhave a cardiod pattern of 500 Hz to18 kHz, but may go to an omni pat-tern below 500 Hz. Plus, you need toknow where the dB down points arein the polar pattern to help withaiming for clarity.

THE 3:1 RULENow that your memory has been

jogged on the basics of microphonepatterns, let's move on to the rules ofmic'ing. The first is the 3:1 rule,

which I consider to be one of the gold-en rules of mic'ing. 3:1 is the ratio ofhow close you can safely place micro-phones together before they startworking against each other. If youhave a microphone 1 foot from some-one speaking, the next microphoneneeds to be at least 3 feet away. If not,your sound may be colored (hollow),or one microphone may be consider-ably weaker and lacking gain -be fore-feedbac k. The effects of breaking the3:1 rule are due to phase cancella-tions.

A common belief in churchaudio is the more mics, the

more sound. This isincorrect!

THE INVERSE SQUARE LAW

The next thing that we have to lookat is the inverse square law. The basicconcept is that every time you doublethe distance, you lose 6 dB of gain.Keeping this in mind and pertainingto the subject at hand, you need to re-member that there are gain lassesfrom the source to the microphone,as well as in distance itself. The in-verse square law is more involvedthan what I just described, but that'sas far as I'm getting into it.

To summarize the rules and regu-lations of mic'ing technique, I'llpaint a little picture. The first thingyou need to look at is how close youare going to place the mics to thesource (keeping in mind the inversesquare law). Then, make sure thatyou are not violating the 3:1 rule.Next, use the pick-up pattern to aimthe mic to get the most uniform gainpossible.

HOW MANY MICS?

A common belief in church audio isthe more mics, the more sound. Thisis incorrect! Every time you openmore than one microphone you losegain -before -feedback. In fact, everytime you double the amount of openmicrophones you will lose 3 dB ofgain to your system. (See Figure 2.)

Looking again at Figure 2, you willnotice that if you use the typical fourmicrophones to mic a choir, you arelosing 6 dB of gain -before -feedbackin your system, and it forces you touse close mic'ing techniques. Now Iknow that those using this techniquedo it so that each section can bemic'ed for balance, but from the sizeof the average church choir (whichranges from ten to seventy-fivemembers), you are defeating yourpurpose. Because of the extremelyclose mic'ing, you are going to get iso-lated voices. You can't amplify some-thing that is not there, and chancesare you are violating the 3:1 rule.

I use two approaches when it comesto mic'ing the typical church choir. Istart with two mics, because mostchoir lofts are split, and then locatethe mics slightly above and approxi-mately 1-V2 to 2- V2 feet in front of thefirst row. Next, by picturing what thepolar pattern looks like, I will aim themicrophones so that the first row ofthe choir is just within the 3 dB -downpoint of the polar pattern. You haveto make sure that the mic you selectto do the job has tight uniformfrequency response throughout thepolar pattern. By having this uni-form frequency response, you willkeep the tone quality fairly constanteven at the 3 dB down point in thepattern. You will notice in Figure3(A) that there are minimal micro-phones open, which keeps the systemgain high. The 3:1 rule is not in viola-tion, which keeps the clarity in thesound. Using fairly close mic'ing also

0°

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3 dB down point

6 dB down point

270°

(A)

Omni

(B)

(C)

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keeps the system gain high, but no-tice that it is far enough back it letsthe natural blend of the choir comethrough. The placement just de-scribed would primarily be used for achoir positioned in a rectangle for-mation with an aisle down themiddle.

For some reason the bass, baritone,and tenor sections are usuallysmaller than the alto and soprano. Ifthis is the ease at your church and thechoir is in a slight U position, youcould add a microphone back towardthe men's section of the choir againas in Figure 3(B). By using only three

Cardioid

180°

Super cardioidv

Unidirection type

Hyper cardioid

Figure 1. Various microphone types. At (A) 3 dB and 6 dBdown points, at (B) the four patterns, while at (C) you cansee what happens if you use an omni or directional mic atdifferent angles of acceptance.

microphones you are only going tolose approximately 1.5 dB of gain -before -feedback from the previoustwo mics.

Using cardiod-typemicrophones is usuallypreferred because of

monitor speakers being soclose, which helps keep

them from fighting againsteach other.

Therefore, you will only be down4.5 dB, whereas if you add just onemore to make four microphones youwill be down a total of 6 dB of gain -before -feedback.

It looks as if this is not a large lossof gain -before -feedback, but youneed to remember that we are look-ing at a logarithmic measurement inwhich it takes the doubling of thepower to get 3 dB increase, andyou're decreasing the power by halfwith a 3 dB loss. I feel a loss of 3 dB isacceptable, but you are compromis-ing gain -before -feedback when youare losing 6 dB of gain.

Figure 2. Using more mics re-sults in fixed dB losses.

MIC'ING SMALL GROUPSWhen mic'ing a small group or en-

semble you need to remember thesame general rules. The only thingthat I am going to vary from is thetype of microphone that is going to beused. They are all designed withspecific purposes in mind, so each ap-plication warrants finding the typeof microphone that will best suit thepurpose.

There is no concrete right orwrong for microphone

placement as long as youfollow the inverse square law

and the 3:1 rule.

The most common situation inchurch audio is the gospel quartet. Itis also one of the easiest. In mostcases you don't have to worry aboutthe 3:1 rule because the mic is usuallyonly an inch or two from the singersmouth. Even if it is more than two in-ches away, the next closest mic can besix inches. The inverse square lawapplies, but you are using such closemic'ing, that it has an excellent tradeoff. Using cardiod-type microphonesis usually preferred because of moni-tor speakers being so close, whichhelps keep them from fightingagainst each other. Most quartetsingers like the advantage of the mi-crophone's proximity effect, which isa bass boost the closer your soundsource gets to the mic.

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Figure 4. shows the strongest pickup area (shaded area) for the backrows.

The next case of interest is thevocal ensemble, a group of eight toten people that stand in formation.There are two ways of mic'ing. Thefirst is similar to the mic'ing tech-nique of the quartet. Close-mic'ingorhand-held microphones for eachsinger is probably the best way ofmic'ing this type of singing groupeven though you are losing 6 dB ormore of gain -before -feedback, de-pending on whether you have eightor ten singers. Again, the extremelyclose mic'ing is going to be yoursaving grace in this situation. Mostchurches don't have an extra eight toten channels available for this type ofmic'ing. Therefore, you can haveseveral people sharing the same mi-crophone. If the singers are usingsteps or choir risers, using omni-mi-crophones will be your optimumchoice, see Figure 4. If you have touse this type of mic'ingyou do need tokeep the inverse square law inmind-"less is best." Split the sing-

ers into groups of three or more andkeep the mic as close as possible to acentral point, keeping maximumgain -before -feedback. Remember tocheck the 3:1 rule when using thismic'ing technique.

EXPERIMENT

There is no concrete right or wrongfor microphone placement as long asyou follow the inverse square law andthe 3:1 rule. Look at what you wantto accomplish, and, based on theguidelines that we discussed in thebeginning of this article, try a coupleof different placements. Make notesof the outcome and use the one thatbest accomplishes your goals.

I would be interested in hearingabout some of your experiments, orany subject in church audio that youwould like covered. You can write meat: P 0 Box 1702, Springfield, OH45501, or in care of db Magazine a)

cD

AES PREVIEW

These manufacturers are among those exhibiting at the New York AES Convention. Theinformation on this page was supplied by them.

AMS/CALREC-has the AudioFile Digital Work Sta-tion, and the Logic 1 Digital Mixer with all the latestsoftware. See us at AES booth number 511.

APHEX- will show the new Aural Exciter III, andthe Model 150 dual channel VCA remote -control sys-tem. See us at AES booth 504.

AUDIO -TECHNICA-introduces a new line of wire-less microphone systems, the TriPoint microphone, theAT4051 cardioid microphone, the ATM25 microphone,the AT853PM miniature cardioid condenser micro-phone, the 900 Series studio phones. See us at AESbooth number 151.

COMMUNITY LIGHT & SOUND-debuts the field-tested R880 Speaker System for fixed and flying instal-lations needing the latest in three-way design. Seeus atAES booth number 116A.

CONNECTRONICS-brings new wire and cable,patch bays, and his unique bodge plugs. See us at AESbooth number 405.

CREST-has their full range of Crest amplifiers, andthe Gamble EX56 (a 56 channel, live mixing console),and the FA Series of amplifiers. See us at AES boothnumber 134.

CROWN-is bringing their new SASS -P MicrophoneSystem. Using a PZM technology, the Stereo AmbientSampling System stereo condenser microphone has awide range of applications. Much of the full Crown linewill also be shown. See us at AES booth number 510.

db MAGAZINE- will have the issue you are nowholding at its stand. In addition, our sister company,ELAR Publishing will have copies of "The New Record-ing Studio Handbook", " The Microphone Handbook"and "The Handbook of Sound System Design." See usat booth number 518.

ELECTRO -VOICE-introduces their new Vega wire-less mic system, a new E.V.hard-wired mic, and the N-DYM 1-2 MT High Frequency Driver Manifold System.See us at AES booth number 206B.

FOSTEX- Introduces their new moving -fader auto-mation, a bank of sixteen motorized faders that canread SMPTE or MIDI commands, they will also showthe 2016 line mixer which can be configured as a 16 x 2or two 8 x 2s, the RM1000 Near Field Monitor with its12 -in. woofer and Fostex RP Technology ribbon twee-ter, also they will show MidiRemote Software for theFostex MTC-1 and IBM, Atari, and Mac computers. Seeus at AES Room number 524/26.

GAUSS-will show their full line of coaxial speakersand their 12 -18 -in. woofers with 4.125 -in. voice coils.See us at AES booth number 206B.

HM ELECTRONICS-has a new portable wirelessintercom system, the 800 Series, the RP755 Four Chan-nel Power Station of the 700 Series Cabled IntercomLine, the RW760 Interface Unit. See us at AES boothnumber 209.

JRF MAGNETIC SCIENCES-shows theirnew cen-ter -track time -code conversion systems. The TC-50Time Code/FM Processor is for use with Otari MX5050series machines, other retrofitted kits are available forthe Studer A-80,Sony/MCI JH110A/B, AmpexATR102,and Otari MX505 Mk III machines. This yea4a new BC-BII kit permits an Otari MX5050 II to be ex-ternally controllable and adaptable for center -tracktime -code operation. See us at AES booth number164/5.

MEYER SOUND-celebrates their 10 -year anniver-sary. They will show the CP-10 Complimentary PhaseParametric Equalizes the MS -2, MS -3 Power Amps,the MSL-3 Reinforcement Speake4 the UPA-1A Ul-traSeries Loudspeaker, the USW-1 UltraSeries Sub-

woofer, the 650-R2 Subwoofer, the UM -1AUltramonitor, the UPM-1 UltraSeries ReinforcementLoudspeaker; the 500A Loudspeaker System, the MS1000A Stereo Power Amplifier, and their SIM Equaliza-tion Process. See us at AES booth number 701.

NEVE-shows the Neve VR 60 Flying Fader Auto-mation, their Digital Transfer Console, and now theMitsubishi-X880, X86HS, X86, and XE2. See us atAES booth number 725.

SHURE BROS-will have their Automation Mic Ser-ies, the SP Series of audio circuitry products, the Shurewireless mic systems, the new Beta series mics, as wellas their regular line of SM series mics. See us at AESbooth number 422.

SONY-brings the now famous PCM3348 48 -chan-nel DASH multi -track digital recorder and also theirMXP-3056VF 56 -input mixing console. They will alsoshow their line of professional mics for studio record-ing, production and sound reinforcement application.See us at AES booth number 138B.

STEWART-introduces the MM -4, a 4 -channelmixer and a battery operated +48 V Phantom PowerSupply, as well as their Half -Rack Power Amps. See usat AES booth number 111.

STUDER-introduces a pre -production version ofthe D820-48 (multi -channel digital recorder which isDASH format 48 -track). See us at AES booth number733.

TASCAM-brings the new 688 "Midistudio" a newportable eight -track mix recorder, the new MTS-1000Midiizer, and the new TSR eight -track recorder/repro-ducei as well as the equally new MSR-24 recorder/re-producer. See us at AES booth number 94B.

YAHAMA-in additon to two booths at the show, theywill have exhibits and demonstrations at their nearbyYamaha Communications Center. They will be intro-ducing a new digital sound processor, a new commercialdigital delay, and a new PM1200 console for sound rein-forcement. Also promised, the MIDI Grand Piano-anold friend in a revolutionary new context. See us atAES booth number 180-1.

Nev 14044(24

4 -CHANNEL MIXERSThe MM -4 from Stewart Electron-

ics is a 4 -channel mixer designed toprovide high performance and flexi-bility in a space saving half -rackchassis. It is available with stereooutput (MM -4S) or monaural output(MM4-M). The MM -4 is ideal for anyapplication requiring a compactmixer with four independent chan-nels. Its four channels accept eithermicrophone or line level inputs. Eachof the unit's balanced input channelsfeatures a Mic/Line switch, Level ad-just and (MM4-S) L/R Pan control.The MM -4 also features a switchable+48v/10ma regulated PhantomPower Supply to provide power forcondenser mics and active direct

NEAR FIELD MONITORTannoy's NFM-8 (DMT) near field

monitor has all the accuracy andbenefits of the larger dual concentricmonitors. It incorporates a revolu-tionary, new 8 -inch Dual Concentricdriver in a ported, medite enclosureoffering solid bass reproduction. Thespeaker's compact dimensions makethem ideally suited for use in smallstudios, broadcast facilities, remotercording vehicles, or as an easily -transportable reference source forindependent engineers and largerrecording studios. The drive unituses a deep -drawn, aluminum highfrequency diaphragm, seated in apolyamide based suspension. Thiscombination provides the piston -likerigidity associated with titanium, yetavoids the inevitable high frequencybreak-up modes, resulting in flat -frequency response up to 25 kHz( ± 3dB) with superb clarity and un-matched transient response. Im-provements in the low frequency sec-tion include a new roll -surrounddesign that ensures linearity by max-imizing acoustic radiation from thecone's accurate piston action, whileminimizing acoustic intereferencefrom the surround itself; and inter -

boxes. Because of the MM -4'sswitchable output operating level,the unit may be used in broadcast ap-plications (in -10 setting) as well asall stage and studio environments (in+4 setting). It operates from a 24 V

nal cross bracing that locks thedriver and enclosure into a singleunit. The latter provides the two -foldadvantage of both increasing thestructural strength of the monitor aswell as virtually eliminating un-wanted cabinet resonances. TheDual Concentric design results in anexceptional reference monitor offer-ing true point -source performance,

AC power supply included with theproduct.Mfr. -Stewart ElectronicsPrice -MM -4M-$349.00MM -4S-$399.00Circle 60 on Reader Service Card

being aligned not only in space butalso in time. The monitors arefinished in high-tech, anthracitegray; and pro -calibre, bi-wired cross-over networks complete the pack-age.Mfr.-TannoyPrice -$998.00 per pair


a)01

IQ SYSTEMCrown's IQ System 2000 has ten

major monitoring functions, alongwith six control features. The moni-toring functions allow review of theon/off status for each amplifier chan-nel, input attenuation level, audiosignals at each amplifier's input andoutput, the inversion of the audio sig-nal, the IOC (Input/Output Com-paritor) and ODEP (Output DeviceEmulator Protection) signals, VCC(rail voltage) signal, on/off status ofthe auxiliary control line, and theDSPI (Data Signal Presence Indica-tor) on/off status.The control functions let you turn

any channel's high -voltage supplieson or off, decrease or increase theinput level attenuation in incre-ments of 1 dB, invert the audio sig-nal's polarity, mute the audio signal,turn any device you have connected

SPEAKER CABINETSThe RED LINE 15 is a PA speaker

system offering exceptional per-formance in a compact, affordablepackage. A compression horn, 15 -in.driver, and 2000 Hz cross -over arehoused in an attractive multi -ply Fircabinet with black pebble finish,recessed handles, and stack -lockcorners. The connector, which is hid-den in the handle, allows added pro-tection to your cabling and connec-tions.Mfr. -Joe's Sound and SalamiPrice -$449.00


OCTAVE EQUILIZERThe model 4700 is an analog equi-

lizer based on White's implementa-tion ofR-C active filters. It maintainsa high degree of audio performancewhile taking advantage of con-venience, flexibility and security ofdigital control. Its one-third octavefilters are programmed in 0.5 dBsteps. The program is stored in one ofthe ten memory registers. High andlow-pass filter adjustments as well asoutput gain settings are also stored.Each equalizer is housed in a singlerack space and can ordered as a twochannel version. Multiple channelscan be networked to respond to onecommand source: the first equal-izer's front panel or optional RS-232/EIA-422 interface. The networkcan also be programmed with up to

to the auxiliary control line on or off,and turn the DSPI trouble -shootingfeature on or off.Mfr. -Crown

ten presets when controlled by thefirst equalizer, or an unlimited num-ber when controlled with an externalcomputer. Other features include:Active servo -balanced inputs andoutputs; Less than 0.05% THD andbetter than 98 dB signal to noiseratio; Variable gain from -6 to +12

Price -IQ P.I.P. Card -$349.00IQ System Interface -$895.00


dBu, adjustable in 0.5 dB steps; EQin/out switch; Clip indication; 90-130/180-260,50/60 Hz V AC opera-tion.Mfr. -White InstrumentsPrice -mono -$875stereo -$1375Circle 64 on Reader Service Card

MIX -MINUS SYSTEMThe 1900 Mix -Minus permits up to

8 discrete, simultaneous mix-minus/IFB set-ups for field corre-spondents. It will be used for news-casts, talk shows, sporting events,elections and other applicationswhere it is necessary to feed programinformation to a remote locationminus the audio from that location.It is a stand alone system that maybeused with most existing audio con -soles.Mfr.-Auditronics Inc.Price -$8,000.00 (16 x 8 typical)Circle 65 on Reader Service Card

MICROPHONE POWERSUPPLYThe MP -12 T microphone power

supply is designed to provide op-timum operating voltage to con-denser microphones configured for12 volt T or A -B powering, such asthe Sennheiser MKH 416/816 andSchoeps CMC4. It's compact andbattery operated. It featuresselectable 0, -10, or -20 dB attenua-

EXTENDED RANGESPEAKER LINEThe Extended Range speaker line

has been expanded with the SH-1810-ER speaker systems. The mod-els include the SH-1810-ER, a three-way, full -range main speakersystem; SH-1810-ER, an 18 -inchsubwoofer system; and SH-1810H-ER, a high -output, mid/high enclo-sure. The systems utilize the DH3 ti-tanium -diaphragm, "convex -drive"compression driver with the uniqueTime Path phase plug providingsmooth, powerful highs. The DL1OXmidrange driver is used in conjunc-tion with the patented Aperiodic En-hancer phase plug. The phase plugdesign automatically adjusts for highfrequency "beaming", allowing asingle driver to cover the criticalvocal range without crossover inter-ference. The mid and high com-ponents are identical to those used inEV's professional concert/touringMTH-4 Manifold Technology sys-tem. The 60 degree x 40 degree, allhorn -loaded design provides uni-form, large -room audience coveragewith constant directivity. The low-

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tion; as well as two steps of bass roll -off. The unit will operate up to 60hours from two 9 -volt alkaline bat-teries. Input and output connectorsare standard XLR 3 -pin; the outputside also features a 15 -in built-incable that conveniently eliminatesthe need for a separate jumper cable.Mfr. -Audio Services CorporationPrice -175.00Circle 66 on Reader Service Card

c NJfrequency section, utilizing the Sub -Scoop design with the EVM-18B Pro -Line woofer, combines all of theadvantages of a vented box-ex-tended low -frequency response andreduced excursion-with horn -loaded efficiency. The SH-1810-ERis also available as a modular system.The SH-1810L-ER is an 18 -inch sub -woofer providing efficient low -frequency output, with power hand-ling of 400 watts long-term and1,600 watts peak. It may be usedeither as the low end of this modularsystem, or as a subwoofer for otherfull -range speaker systems. The SH-1810H-ER is a high -output mid/highenclosure, using DL1OX and DH3components for high performancewith power handling of 300 wattslong-term and 1,2000 watts peak.The optional 1810P mounting sys-tem is used to assemble the modularsystem.Mfr.-Electro-VoicePrice -1810 -ER -$2249.901810H -ER -$1199.901810L -ER -$959.90


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Applied Research and Technology, Inc. (ART) MultiVerb EXT DigitalSignal Processor.

GENERAL INFORMATIONThe MultiVerb EXT is a digital signal processor that

can create multiple effects. The unit has been pro-grammed with many digital algorithms to provide a widerange of natural and simulated stereo reverberation ef-fects. Also included are digital delay, stereo chorusing andflanging, multi -tape delays, and pitch transposition. It ispossible to combine effects or even to create your ownsound effects with this versatile processor.

The MultiVerb EXT can be used in a variety of setups(including mixing consoles), with effect and return facili-ties, directly in line between a musical instrument andamplifier, in the effects loop of an amplifier, and even inthe tape loop of a home receiver.

A wide variety of input/output combinations may beused with the MultiVerb EXT. One in one out (mono,) onein two out (stereo image), two in one out (summed monooutput), and two in two out (stereo). When using the Mul-tiVerb EXT in the stereo mode, only the dry signal will re-main totally left and right oriented at the outputs. Theprocessed signal will be a mix of the outputs with its ownindividual stereo image dictated by the particular algo-rithm used.

CONTROL LAYOUTThe unit has no power on/off switch and, according to

ART, can be powered continuously. The presumption isthat if it is to be rack mounted there will undoubtedly bea master power switch somewhere that controls the en-tire rack system. An input level slide control is locatedjust below the bank of input level indicators and is used toadjust the input signal level. The input level indicatorsare colored differently (green LEDs for -24 and -12 dB,yellow for -6 dB and red for 0 dB). "Mix" and "Output"level slide controls are mounted one above the other. Themix control varies the amount of effect signal in the out-put from "dry" only to "effect" only. A fifty/fifty mix isachieved when this control is at its detented center posi-tion. The output level control adjusts the final outputlevel of the unit. While the unit can be used to achievesome overall signal gain, that is, of course, not its pur-pose, and so the center-detented position of the outputlevel control corresponds to unity gain.

A seven segment display towards the left side of thefront panel informs the user of the current operationmode, preset number or memory location. A decimalpoint indicates whether you are in keypad mode, editmode, or MIDI/title mode. All information relative to apreset effect is displayed by a backlit LCD, whose viewingangle can be changed for best visibility.

All of the remaining control buttons with the exceptionof "preset select up" and "preset select down" buttonsand the "Bypass" button, serve a dual purpose. The splitfunctions are identified by colors. Preset selection isdepicted by the color purple. Preset control functions arelabeled in gray. Preset selection can be done either byusing the "up" and "down" buttons or by keypad numberentry. A keypad mode/edit mode button is an extremelyimportant button that can easily be misused if you are notcareful. When you are in the keypad mode, you are able toaccess all of the 200 possible effects presets either byscanning or by keypad direct entry. When in the edit modeyou can create your own effects, using theAdd Effect but-ton and calling up the nineteen various type of effectsavailable (e.g. equalizer, flanger, reverb , etc, etc.) A but-ton that, in this mode, is labeled delete effect allows you toerase preset effects, while another one labeled title editallows you to edit or create titles for the various presetsyou have memorized and created. store, select, and value(up and down) buttons are all used as their names sug-gest to access the various variables available in the sys-tem and to store them as part of newly created preseteffects.

Since this unit is equipped with MIDI interface, thereare additional controls that allow you to access all MIDIparameters. The MIDI/title button is used to initiatemost of the control functions associated with the MIDIinterface. John Barilla, in his "Hands On" evaluation ofthe MultiVerb EXT will discuss the MIDI applications inmore detail.

Inputs and outputs to and from the unit are connectedby means of cables terminating in 1/4 -inch unbalancedphone plugs that plug in to jacks on the rear panel. A re-mote jack is also found here. It is intended to be used witha foot -switch or some other form of momentary switch.This jack can be programmed to be used for three differ-ent modes: unit bypass, increment preset mode, or

0

-1.000

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Figure 1. The MultiVerb-EXTs freqency response.Note that deviation is by 1 dB.

sample trigger mode (for instant replay or "grabbing" ofa sample of previously created program material). MIDIinput and output DIN connectors complete the rear -panel layout.

LABORATORY MEASUREMENTSAs you can see from the VITAL STATISTICS chart that

appears at the end of this report, there are not too manyoperating parameters for a unit of this type that lendthemselves to laboratory or bench measurement. Thevery nature of a signal processor is its dynamic character.Its behavior depends in great measure upon the type ofmusical or dynamic signal applied to it as well as upon thetype of effect that has been called forth from one of itsmany presets. Accordingly, our measurements were con-fined primarily to a plot of basic frequency response (orbandwidth), as shown in Figure 1, and to a plot of totalharmonic distortion at input levels corresponding to 0 dBindications on the input level LED metering system (Fig-ure 2).

Frequency response was perfectly flat down to 20 Hzand was off by only -1.0 dB at 20 kHz. (The manufactureronly claims a bandwidth extending to 15 kHz.) Distor-tion plus noise hovered at or below the 0.04 percent pointover the entire range of frequencies measured. We alsomeasured the signal-to-noise ratio of the unit, again re -

SPECIFICATIONPresetsMemory LocationsBandwidthMax. Operating LevelDynamic RangeInput ImpedanceOutput ImpedanceDimensionsPower RequirementsSuggested Price

InIallUAA (AS) A us Frouuency OW;

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3.0000

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Figure 2. Total harmonic distortion (including noise)from 20 Hz to 10 kHz.

ferred to an input corresponding to 0 dB and with outputadjusted for unity gain. Under these conditions, A -weighted signal-to-noise ratio measured 94.6 dB for onechannel and 93.8 dB for the opposite channel.

CONCLUSIONSWithout having access to a complete recording studio in

which to put a unit such as this through its paces in thereal world of signal processing, it would be somewhatpresumptuous of me to draw any conclusions concerningthe effectiveness of the ART Multi Verb EXT Signal Pro-cessor. For this reason, db Senior Editor John Barillajoins me in this test report and he will describe his ex-periences with the unit. This much I can say, from simplyhaving read the owner's manual and experimented withthe unit briefly on the test bench: it is truly amazing whatmanufacturers and designers such as ART have beenable to do since the introduction of digital signal pro-cessing. I can't imagine how much hardware would havebeen required to achieve all of the possible effects thatthis unit can deliver before the advent of digital signalprocessing. It would probably have taken up the entirecubic space of the typical small studio. Contrast that withthis compact unit that occupies less than two vertical in-ches of rack space and you begin to realize just what thedigital age has done for audio technology.

VITAL STATISTICSMFR'S CLAIM

11020015 kHz+16 dBV90 dB1M ohm1K ohm1.75" H x 19" W x 10"117V AC, 60 Hz$675.00

117

db MEASUREDConfirmedConfirmedSee Figure 1+18 dBV94.4 dBConfirmedConfirmed

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rnCD

Hands On Review: The ART MultiVerb-EXT

JOHN BARILLA

This new opus from Applied Research and Technology(ART) opens the door on a whole new generation of rea-sonably priced digital multi -effects units. Utilizing a 20 -

bit processor; this unit is fast, clean, and user friendly.Listing at $675.00, the MultiVerb-EXT offers the mostcomprehensive combination of sonics and programma-bility I have seen in this price range. And while under-standably some compromises had to be made in order topack so much versatility into a single rack -space unit, thetrade-offs seem to be wise ones. In fact, it is the very ele-gant simplicity of design which makes the MultiVerb-EXT so useful.

FEATURES AT A GLANCEThere are 200 memory locations in the Multi Verb-EXT,

and 110 of them are pre-programmed combinations of ef-fects. A maximum of four simultaneous effects is possiblein many cases, but with certain effects which have moresophisticated algorithms (hence, using up more RAM),only two or three simultaneous effects may be possible.The user may customize factory presets or start fromscratch putting together his/her own combination of ef-fects from twenty-two categories of algorithms. Includedare EQ, chorus, flanger, pitch-Ext transposer; stereo andmono DDLs, various reverbs and gated-EXT reverbs,some very breath-Ext taking multi -tap delays, and arudimentary sampler.

Access to the parameters of each independent effect,the levels of each effect relative to the others, and in somecases, the actual routing of the effects (series/parallel,pre/post) is possible through the front panel or via MIDIcontrollers. MIDI implementation is extensive, allowingany MIDI controller to be assigned to virtually any acces-sible function on the unit.

INS, OUTS, AND SIGNAL FLOWThere are two single -ended 1.0 M ohm inputs on the

Multi Verb-EXT which allows the unit to be driven ade-quately by either a high-level signal from a mixer ordirectly from a low-level musical instrument such as aguitar. The two inputs are mixed together prior to beingdigitized and is hence routed to the DSP (digital signalprocessor) as a summed mono signal. The stereo algo-rithms, however, will result in a stereo output for theprocessed signal. (While I am always hoping that a unitof this type will offer discrete stereo inputs and outputs, Irealize that would probably require two separate DSPs,thereby increasing the cost beyond the reasonable cate-gory).

So the upshot is this: When patched into an effectssend/receive circuit on a recording console, a mono sendwill be sufficient to drive the unit, even though the outputwill require a stereo return. The two inputs on the Multi-Verb-EXT do have value when the unit is driven by astereo instrument. Since the onboard mix circuit allowsthe stereo aspect of the dry signal to remain intact andlater summed with the processed signal, it is thenpossible to retain some of the original imaging of the in-strument by adjusting the ratio of dry/wet from the frontpanel of the unit.

Input metering is by way of an LED headroom metermonitoring a range from -24 to 0 dB. Like all digital dev-ices, the unit is optimized when the input signal only oc-casionally kisses 0 db. The input and output sliders arecenter detented at unity gain. With a reported 90 dB sig-nal ratio, the MultiVerb-EXT is a quiet unit, but mostespecially so when the sliders are kept as close to unitygain as possible.

Other I/O considerations include MIDI in and out. Theoutput may be configured to echo input information tothe output (merging with the unit's own output). This isvaluable if it is desired to drive another unit with similarMIDI information. Aprogrammable remote jack is alsoavailable on the rear panel.

The Multi Verb-EXT has one of the most user friendlyfront panel controls that I have ever used. Every detail ofit seems to be engineered to help you get what you arelooking for with as little distraction as possible. Creativepeople really appreciate this kind of design.

For example, the view -angle of the LCDs is adjustablefrom the front panel. (How often have you installed a unitat the height and angle convenient for you, only to findthat the display seemed washed out and difficult to readfrom your normal position?) Happily, with the MultiVerb-EXT, I was able to adjust the LCD for maximum readabil-ity from the front panel.

All functions are easy to access. There are really threemodes of operation for the MultiVerb-EXT. In the keypadmode, memory location numbers can be directly typed in.No need to scroll through 200 numbers. Nonetheless, ifyou do need to scroll, you can do it at two speeds, what I'llcall normal and hyper. At the hyperspeed, numbers incre-ment/decrement by units of ten, which makes 200 pre-sets go by very quickly.

If you want to "get inside" the sounds you'll need toenter the edit mode. In this case the 0-9 keys that wereotherwise used to punch in memory locations, now be-come sophisticated multi -function keys. With them youcan add or delete any of the twenty-two categories of al-gorithms or adjust the parameters of the each individualalgorithm in the effects chain that you have configured.

The third mode of operation is MIDI/Utility which al-lows the user to access MIDI channels, modes, and theMIDI program table, to perform MIDI dumps and so on.The title function is also accessed here. On some otherunits, titling can be a laborious process, but not so on theMultiVerb-EXT. Because it is such a fast processor, titlingis a breeze.

HOW DOES IT SOUND?That's the bottom line, isn't it? A DSP can do cart-

wheels and make coffee but the sound has to be on patelse the pyrotechnics are vacuous. The MultiVerb-EXTscores very high in this regard. It is a clean, naturalsounding unit worthy of use in the most demanding ap-plications.

What's even more impressive though is the architec-ture of the algorithms. As mentioned earlier, a multi -ef-fects processor (where several effects may be usedsimultaneously) must, of necessity, extract only the mostsalient features from each algorithm, and make those ac-cessible to the user. ART's engineers seem to have made

all the right choices here. They have picked the parame-ters that are essential to making a reverb reverberate orflange flangelate-ifyou get the point-and left out someof the less important parameters. Of course, much of thisis a design necessity.

With four effects going, it means that each can only util-i ze a proportion of the DSP's powei so they each have tobe less sophisticated. Nonetheless, for the user there is acertain liberation here. You don't have to scroll through along list of parameters, many of which seem to be of moreacademic interest than practical sonic significance. Eachof the parameters here does something important, whichmakes the job of ganging three or four customized effectstogether a lot quicker.

There is one algorithm about which I am particularlyimpressed. ART actually considers it two algorithms:Tapped DDL Short and Tapped DDL Long. But for now,let's consider from a generic perspective. What we havehere is an extremely high quality multi -tap delay capableof one to seven taps, distributed in stereo or mono. As thediagram shows, there are three ways of organizing the re-lationship of the taps. g for example, we chose an overalldelay time of 100 ms and decided on four taps, if the rela-tionship of the taps was chosen to be even, then each tapwould be about 25 ms apart. Likewise, choosing a short-ened relationship would mean that the taps are notevenly spaced, but start out sparsely spaced and runcloser together as the overall delay time is approached. Ofcourse the lengthened relationship is just the opposite:taps are inititially more closely spaced, becoming furtherapart as the overall time is approached.

Superimpose upon this an envelope that shapes thelevel of these taps so that it is either flat (all taps at samelevel), sloped (diminishing over time), or reverse (in-creasing over time), and you have a fairly sophisticatedmulti -tap delay.

What ART does (that eliminates a lot of unproductiveuser decision making), is serve this up to you on sort of amatrix grid where the eighteen possible combinations(even, shortened, lengthened) x (flat, reverse, slope) x(stereo, mono) are available to you as a single selection.What this does is enable the user to A/B/C (etc.) a tre-mendous number of possibilities in an incredibly shortperiod of time.

While certain other algorithms are verboten with thismulti -tap algorithm, digital EQ and reverb are allowable.The EQ is automatically placed in the beginning of thechain, so it's pre-EQ. And the reverb is automaticallyplaced after the multi -tap, which is its most useful placeanyway. With some other combinations such as EQ +DDL + Chorus + Gated Reverb, the chorus can be as-signed to the beginning or the end of the signal chain.

I guess the point of it is this: ART allows you many of themost useful combinations and prevents you coming upwith anything that might sound like digital mud! It doesnot do everything, but what it does, it does extremelywell.

One area where no stone has been left unturned is thearea of MIDI control. The implementation here is ratherextensive. To examine all of it in the context of a short re-view is not possible. But once again, there is one feature Itested which is particularly useful. ART calls it PM or per-formance MIDI. That means simply that the MultiVerb-EXT allows the user to map any MIDI controller onto any

FLAT

7 TAPS

SLOPED RVRS

1111 111115 TAPS 3 TAPS

FLAT -SHORTEN

FLAT -LENGTHEN

FLAT -EVEN

Figure I. An algorithm used by the ARTMultiVerb-EXT.

parameter control of any algorithm, and to scale the re-sponse of the controller. For example, I could program theNote On Key # to control the Position parameter in a Re -verb algorithm. The effect would be that as I ascPnded thekeyboard (the higher the note #), the greater the ap-parent distance from the source the listener would ap-pear. (These parameter changes would be enactedsmoothly, in real-time and reflected as a percentage inthe LCD readout.) Simultaneously, I could program Re -verb Time to respond to Pitch -Bend Wheel so that as Imanipulated the wheel (or stick) from my keyboard, thereverb time would go from 0 to the maximum time avail-able. I could also scale this to adjust the response so thatthe range was pleasing. Of course this could be again al-lowing multiple controllers to modify the parameters ofmultiple algorithms. Perhaps this all might sound a littlehairy to a marginal MIDI user, but it's really quite simpleto program-particularly the way ART has it laid out.

Alas, there is something about this unit which does notlive up to the high standards it sets for itself in terms ofsignal processing. It's the sampler. No, there is absolutelynothing wrong with it sonically. It delivers a nice cleansample, virtually identical with the original sound. Theproblem is, it's such a rudimentary one-shot kind of aunit.

First of all, any editing of the two second sample canonly come from one side. So a 2 -second loop can be madeto be 1.7 seconds, but the start time is always the same.There is no provision for chopping any time off the begin-ning of the sample.

Fortunately, the user's manual indicates that the soft-ware for the MultiVerb-EXT can be easily upgraded. Per-haps in future versions we can expect a trulysophisticated algorithm that will permit better editingcapabilities.

CONCLUSIONDespite my criticism of the present sampling algo-

rithm, there is no doubt about it, ART has come up with awinner. The signal processing, the multi -effects pro-grammability, the sophisticated MIDI control, and sonicfidelity of this unit make it almost a "must have" kind ofunit. Dollar for dollai it's hard to imagine how you couldget such a useful DSP for such a reasonable price.

Handbook of

Sound System Design 1 Now/by John Eargle

If you are in sound reinforcement, John Eargle's Handbook of Sound System Designhas the answers to those needs you have for accurate technical information. It is thetechnical bible on everything from a small church to Madison Square Garden, from livesound for 60,000 to canned sound for 600.

There are chapters on:

High -Frequency Speaker Systems

Mid -Frequency Speaker Systems

Low -Frequency Speaker Systems

Dividing Networks

Central Loudspeaker Arrays

Distributed Systems

Paging Systems

Microphones

Ambiance Systems

All this and so much more.

Contents

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Yes! Please send me copies of the Handbook of SoundSystem Design @$37.50 per copy. Add $2.00 for shipping. (NewYork State residents please add appropriate sales tax.)

O Payment Enclosed or charge my

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SHELLEY HERMAN

\4:Archiving Audio

0 n April 12, 1989, in Uni-versal City, California,AGFA Corporation, Mag-netic Tape Division,hosted a seminar an-

nouncing their new AGFA-NXTProcess for restoring previously un-playable tapes. The majority of theseminar preceding the an-nouncement addressed the prob-lems recording engineers areencountering when attempting toplay tapes that have been instorage for many years.

Over 150 of the top recording en-gineers from the Southern Cal-ifornia area were in attendance.

RESTORING THE OLDMASTERS

Entitled Restoring the OldMasters, the all day session startedwith John G. (Jay) McKnight, Presi-dent of Magnetic Reference Labora-tories and chairnian of manystandards committees, explainingthe various track, equalization, andlevel standards that have been in ex-istence since AMPEX released themodel 200 in 1948, a 30 in./sec. fulltrack machine. He explained some ofthe reasons for and differences be-tween the NAB, AES, AME, andCCIR curves, pointing out thatCCIR, IEC, and DIN are all the same,with different names. He also notedthat with all the careful adherence totape standards, there has never beena standard or even a method of com-parison for listening rooms.

Shelley Herman is Shelex Recordsof Hollywood, CA as well asSAVET. (For SAVET informationsee People, Places, Happenings,this issue.)

Jay also listed the saturation pointson some popular recording tapes,and how tape has improved over theyears. A part of that improvementbeing that less high frequency em-phasis is needed on newer tapes. Healso addressed print through, sug-gesting several methods of reductionthat have been used over the years.

During the question period, Jayrecommended that when azimuthdifficulties were encountered, oneshould turn the alignment tape up-side down and check it again. If theazimuth is not the same, the culprit isprobably head zenith or a polished ordamaged capstan. When asked aboutpink noise as an equalizationmethod, he said it was very good, butwhite noise was better because it didnot roll off at high frequencies andphase differences were very obvious.

McKnight's final point was: "Evenafter alignment, use your ears."

One stereo hour isequivalent to a half a million

pages of text.

Werner Singhoff, AGFA's Techni-cal Directoi explained how extendedstorage affects magnetic media.

The first subject was mechanicaldamage. Uneven winding is probablythe worst culprit, and the most easilyavoided. It causes creases, pancakedeformation, edge damage, and tapestretch. The cure is to wind the tape,tails out, in one pass, at a reasonablespeed before storage. Storage condi-tions are important. Although bothSMPTE and EBU have storage rec-ommendation documents, they allboil down to a clean environment at

65 degrees F, 35 to 40 percent humid-ity

TAPE DAMAGEOther conditions that affect tape

are: smoke (the particles of smokefrom cigarettes are large enough toreduce high frequencies on tape,)dust, finger prints, and head cleanerresidue. He pointed out that if alco-hol must be used as a head cleaner(which is generally not recom-mended), care must be taken to keepthe container sealed to avoid the ab-sorption of water from air.

Major contributors to tape damageare: scratching, residue and unre-lieved stress, all due to multi -trackshuttling. This was another reasonthat he recommended one pass wind-ing even before short term storage.

Singhoff indicated that the tapecompanies were doing their hest toimprove tape with flatter andsmoother oxide surfaces, better lu-bricants, more stable magneticmaterials, more stable film com-pounds, and better binders. Some ofthe popular materials have beentested, and they found that ferricoxide has had no problems in losingmagnetism over 50 years. CRO2 hasheld up for fifteen years, so fai butmetallic powder tape does not tend tooxidize. He pointed out that AGFAhas been experimenting with variouslubricants, binders and oxides formany years as they feel that theyhave a responsibility to make a good,long-lasting product.

AUDIENCE QUESTIONSMr. Singhoff received many ques-

tions from the audience. Most ofthem wanted to know if there was alubricant available to stop oldertapes from squealing. He was unable V

Ui

to recommend one. Howevei in an-swering a question about old, brittle,acetate tapes, he said that storage ina warm, high -humidity room forseveral days might make the tapeplayable once or twice. When asked ifolder tapes such as 3M 111 have lessprint through, he said yes, becausethe newer, lower noise tapes havefiner particles that are more subjectto print through. Answering a ques-tion about AGFA tape damagingpinch rollers, he said that the com-pany has heard these rumors, con-ducted tests, and concluded that therumors were completely unfounded.

NONOISEMary Saue4 VP of Marketing and

Operations, Sonic Solutions, ex-plained how the NoNoise system hasbeen used for restoration and CD re-issue. NoNoise is a computer systemfor removing noise without affectingthe signal. It needs 10.5 megabytesper stereo minute. One stereo hour isequivalent to a half a million pages oftext. It does 53 million calculations toclean up one second of signal. Whenthe system was first introduced in1986, it took 500 times real-time towork. It now works in 6 -times real-time.

Much has been written about thissystem, but briefly, it receives infor-mation from program material al-ready transferred to 1630 formatdigital, is then transferred to harddisc where it is analyzed and de -

clicked, then the background noise isremoved. The program is then re-turned to tape. Physically, the systemis installed in a Macintosh II, and hasediting, EQ, CD preparation, projectmanagement, and NoNoise.

Gene Wolley, VP Recording andQuality Assurance of MCA Records,and owner of a NoNoise System, ex-plained how they were utilizing theentire system as a complete workstation, and how it was saving bothtime and money. In the question pe-riod, Ms. Sauer explained that thedevice was being used in forensic ap-plications also, and the price was inexcess of 40 thousand. They thenplayed before and after tapes of JimMorrison and the results were excel-lent.

PREPARATION FOR REMIXAfter a gourmet "box lunch"

courtesy of AGFA, attention turnedto Lee Herschberg, Director of En-

gineering, Warner Brothers Records.He told about the preparation of orig-inal analog masters for CompactDisc remix.

Once the tape has beenprocessed, there is only aone -hour window when itmust be played before it

starts to deteriorate again.

Herschberg said that the WarnerBrothers library was complete,beginning with album number one,in three -track stereo, although notall masters are on the same format.For instance, the Concert Sinatraalbum was recorded by Todd AO onsix -track magnetic film, then mixedto three -track, then to stereo. Pre-sently, Warner Brothers Records isrestoring a Peter, Paul, and Mary re-cording from three -track to 3M 111.

THE LOST LENNON TAPESDave Kephart of Westwood One

played parts of the Lost LennonTapes, then explained the process ofrestoration. First the tapes werechecked for phasing, then equalized.As they were quite noisy, he triedseveral methods, settling on a Ber-wen system. He also played someJimi Hendrix tapes that were ecaen-tially home recordings on goodequipment. He had been able to cleanthese up to make some high -qualityreleases.

Dave indicated that on projects ofthis type "sonic consistency from cutto cut is important. The customerwill perceive that something iswrong and not be entertained."

Andy McKaie, Director of A&RSpecial Markets, MCA Records saidthat being in charge of reissues was"A&R for the Dropped and theDead." His main point was that itwas necessary to be very selective inthe use of noise reduction, cleanupand equalization. The importance ofthe new systems is preservation ofmusic and rebuilding libraries, someof which are in very bad shape asMCA has purchased many smalllabels over the years.

Larry Walsh, a recording engineerwith Capitol Records, said that therecording engineer as an archivist,becomes a producer. In order to prop-

erly do the job, he must listen to thetapes, especially the slates and chat-ter, for valuable information. Hemust check any paperwork he canget his hands on, including union re-cords, Billboard, Hot 100, recordcompany paperwork, the tape boxes,and original releac4,. publicity. Hemust talk to the original artist if he isavailable, or anyone else that mayhave been involved. The most impor-tant thing is to remain true to theoriginal, especially if it has a multi-track masted to resist the tempta-tion to make it sound "better" thanthe original. That's not what the con-sumer is buying.

During the Q&A period of thispanel it was suggested that for oldertapes that shed, a play only machinewith less contact surfaces might be asolution.

THE AGFA-NXT PROCESSFinally, the day ended with John

Matarazzo, National TechnicalManager of AGFA, announcing thenew AGFA-NXT Process, a five -stepprocess involving a variety ofprocesses to clean up old tapes. Usinga slide presentation, he showed anold tape before and after treatment.The tape was shredding so muchbefore treatment that it was un-usable. After AGFA-NXT, it wasplayable once, so it could be trans-ferred.

Once the tape has been processed,there is only a one -hour windowwhen it must be played before itstarts to deteriorate again. At thetime of the announcement, JRFMagnetics will be the U.S. agent incharge of the process, and a crew willcome to the customers facility toprocess tapes on the spot so that theycan be transferred immediately. Atthis time, the process is available foraudio tapes only, up to two inch wide,but they say that they know no rea-son why it would not also work withvideotapes.

Unfortunately for those in atten-dance, AGFA, for legal reasons, wasunable to disclose the actual processof AGFA-NXT. Just the fact that atape company has committed the re-sources for such a project is en-couraging to the industry. With theascent of the CD, restoration is im-portant, and a seminar of this typewas most welcome and definitely anasset to the industry.

serving: recording, broadcast and sound contracting fields

Buyer's Guide

On the pages that follow, we present this issue's Buyer's Guide on signal processing equipment. The information

contained is supplied by the respective manufacturers. Further, if a manufacturer that you seek is not listed, the chances

are strong that, as many times as we tried, we could not get information from them.

*Editorial Note: Only units whose sole function is creating reverb have been classified as "Reverbs." Units which utilize algo-rithmic (software) representations of several signal processing functions (which usually include reverb), have more accu-rately been labeled as "Multi -Effects Processors."

MULTI -EFFECTS PROCESSORSAPPLIED RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY -See our ad ort page 3MULTIVERB EXT (Model 370) is a multi -effects processor with sampling capabilities. Effects include flange, chorus, delay,multi -tap, and pitch transposition. Up to 4 effects may be used simultaneously. Programmable and MIDI controllable, it occu-pies a single rack -space.Price: $675.00MULTIVERB II (Model 360), a multiple effect/pitch transposer capable of combining 4 effects simultaneously. It has 19 effectscategories with multiple algorithms, 200 memory locations, is fully programmable, and real-time controllable via MIDI. Occu-pies single rack -space.Price: $599.00MULTIVERB (Model 330), a multiple effect/pitch transposer with 200 memory locations, including 100 factory presets. Totalprogrammability allows you to create your own presets combining 4 effects at once. Occupies a single rack -space.Price: $575.00PROVERB 200 (Model 320) is a digital effects processor with 200 presets offering a full range of studio effects. Over 120 re -verb variations as well as delay, multiple effects, chorusing, and flanging.Price: $399.00SGE (Model 380) is an effects processor/digital reverb/pitch transposer that includes various guitar amplifier simulations(such as overdrive and distortion). Up to 9 effects may be utilized simultaneously and controlled in real time via MIDI or frontpanel. Fills a single rack -space.Price: $699.00

DIGITECHDSP-128 allows user to access 4 effects simultaneously at a full 20-20 kHz bandwidth. Includes reverb, chorusing, flanging,delays to 1.2 s, and multi -tap delay. Features real-time MIDI control of operating parameters.Price: $479.00MSP-4 provides digital reverberation, chorusing, flanging, delays to 500 ms and multi -tap delay. Up to 4 effects may be usedat one time and controlled through MIDI, 128 presets may be stored. Responds to MIDI program changes.Price: $369.00GSP-5 is a digital processor for guitars allowing 5 simultaneous effects including various types of digital distortion rangingfrom warm tube sounds to hard -edged metal. Includes reverb, chorus, flange, delay, doubling, and equalization with MIDIcontrol.Price: $549.00

LT SOUNDECC is a digital delay system with microplate reverb. Delay and reverb may be used simultaneously or independently. Delayrange is from 1 ms to 1 s. Effects include doubling, chorus, flange, plate reverb with delay, acoustic chamber, and tremolo.Dimensions are 1.75 x 19 x 7.5.Price: $995.00

PEAVEY ELECTRONICSOFX-4X4 contains 4 multi -effects processors, each equipped with individual stereo/mono inputs, housed in one single rack -space chassis. Has full MIDI implementation including Sysex Load and Dump. Up to 2.7.5µsof delay per processor.Price: $1,199.00DSR-1000 has true multi -effects capabilities, up to 2.75 seconds of delay echo, and 16 -bit processing. There is full MIDIaccess with re -write and re -map facilities. Effects include delay, chorus, reverb and more, in a single rack -space.Price:$499.00MULTIFEX contains 4 multi -effects processors, each equipped with individual stereo/mono inputs, housed in one single rack -space chassis. Has full MIDI implementation, including Sysex Load and Dump. Up to 2.75 s of delay per processor.Price: $1,199.00

ULTRAVERB has true multi -effects capabilities, up to 2.75 seconds of delay/echo, 16 -bit processing, full MIDI access, andfull re -write and re -map facilities. Effects include delay, chorus, reverb and more, in a single rack -space.Price: $449.00ADDVERB II is capable of delivering digital delay, reverb and other effects. It has up to 680 ms of delay/echo, 128 re -map-pable presets, 16 -bit processing, full MIDI capability, and effects mix and output level in a single rack-space.Price: $399.00UNIVERB II is a digital delay/reverb/effects processor featuring 128 16 -bit effects using VLSI technology. It has a bandwidthof 20 Hz to 12 kHz, stereo and mono -to -stereo configurations, and remote bypass capability in a single rack -space.Price: $299.00

ROLAND CORP. U.S.DEP-3 is a digital multiple effects unit featuring delay, reverb, and EQ. Up to 500 ms delay, 99 memory locations, and 3 -banddigital EQ. Dimensions are 1.9 x 19 x 11.4 and weight is 7.7 lbs.Price: $695.00

DEP-5 is a digital multiple effects unit featuring delay, reverb, chorus, EQ, and stereo panning. Up to 2000 ms delay, 99memory locations, and 3 -band digital EQ. Dimensions are 1.9 x 19 x 11443 and weight is 11 lbs.Price: $1,095.00

R-880 is a digital reverb/effects processors with 4 independent DSPs. Has programs for reverb, non-linear reverb, early reflec-tions, chorus, delay, equalization and compression. Has 90 dB dynamic range, and both analog and AES/EBU digital I/Oconnections. Accommodates 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz signals, weight: 22 lbs.Price: $3,995.00

GC -8 is a "graphic" remote control unit for the R-880. Has large LCD readout (256 x 40 dot), 5 rotary knobs with numerickeypad and memory card slot for storing and loading programs. Dimensions: 2 x 13.1 x 6.9, weight: 2 lbs., 10 oz.Price: $850.00

YAMAHA -See our ad on page 12SPX1000 is a digital multi -effects processor utilizing "second generation" DSP technology. Features 40 factory presets and59 RAM user memory locations. Includes dual and multiple effects programs. Full MIDI compatibility.Price: $1,795.00

FX500 provides up to 5 different effects simultaneously and has extensive programming capability. Has full 20 kHz band-width, 60 preset programs and 30 additional RAM locations for user defined programs. Full MIDI compatibility.Price: $495.00

REVS is a digital reverb/multi-effects processor featuring 30 main effects programs, 9 combined programs, and 60 usermemory locations, and 3 -band parametric equalization is included with switchable I/O level monitoring. MIDI Dump capability.Price: $1,995.00

SPX900 is a digital multi -effects processor utilizing "second generation" DSP technology. There are 50 factory presets and49 RAM user memory locations. Dual and multiple effects programs are featured. Full MIDI compatibility.Price: $995.00

REVERBSLT SOUNDRCC reverb control center is a complete microplate reverb system for use with or without a mixing board. It has 2 micro-phone inputs, inputs for 2 additional stereo sources, an output for a tape recorder, plus 3 -band equalization. Dimensions are1.75 x 19 x 7.5, weight is 7 lbs.Price: $595.00

RV -2 stereo reverb unit features the microplate reverb system and has over 18 kHz of frequency response. Other features in-clude 4 simultaneous inputs per channel for 3 different sounds, 7 -segment LED level indicator on each channel, and decaytime control of 0.6 to 2.4 seconds, weight is 8 lbs.Price: $895.00

DIGITAL DELAYSAPPLIED RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (ART) -See our ad on page 3DELAY SYSTEM VII (Model 400) is a fully programmable digital delay/sampler with a 20-20 kHz frequency response, infinitedelay, chorus, flange, doubling, and echo. Can store presets and has a MIDI interface. Occupies a single rack space.Price: $499.00

DELAY SYSTEM V (Model 390) is a full bandwidth digital delay/sampler featuring 4 delay ranges (which are switchable), in-finite repeat and bypass. Capable of echo, delay and modulated delay effects. Occupies a single rack- space.Price: $349.00

DD3 ALIGNMENT DELAY (Model 250) is a 1in/3out digital time delay offering 256 ms per tap. It has balance ins/outs plus ter-minal strip, and offers 64 kHz sample rate, all in a single rack -space.Price: $749.00

c0r- RDS 7.6 Time Machine is a rack mounted digital delay and sampling unit offering up to 7.6 seconds of delay or sample re -AUDIO LOGIC

cording at full bandwidth (15 kHz, 87 dB), 4 delay/sample ranges, multiple footswitch controllable functions and a 10 to 1ratio for flanging or chorusing.Price: $399.95RDS 2001 rack mounted digital delay and sampling unit offers up to aporoximately 2 seconds of full bandwidth (15 kHz, 87dB) delay or sampling, multiple footswitch controllable functions, and a 10 to 1 ratio for flanging or chorusing.

Price: $339.95RDS 1900 rack mounted digital delay unit offers approximately 2 seconds of full bandwidth delay (15 kHz, 87 dB) for echo,slap back and infinite repeat effects, and a 10 to 1 ratio for flanging or chorusing.

Price: $319.95RDS 3.6 rack mounted digital delay unit offers up to 3.6 seconds of delay at half bandwidth (8 kHz, 87 dB), full bandwidth atall other delay ranges (15 kHz, 87 dB) and a 10 to ' flange or chorus ratio.Price: $299.95R2D3 has 3 independent delay outputs, each capable of up to 327 ms of delay. (Optional up to 1,307 seconds of delay).The unit has linear PCM 16 bit A -to -D -to -A conversion and a battery back-up memory. Minimum delay increment is 20 us.

Price: $799.00R1D1 is a single channel digital delay with a maximum delay time of 320 ms. The unit has linear PCM A -to -D -to -A conver-sion and is DIP switch programmed. Minimum delay switching increments are 5 ms.Price: $450.00

ROLAND CORP. U.S.SDE-3000A is a programmable digital delay with 8 memory locations and a 10 Hz to 17 kHz frequency response. Featuresup to 4500 ms delay time, 100 dB dynamic range, J.03% harmonic distortion. LFO with modulation rate and depth controls.

Price: $1,095.00

SOUND CONCEPTS INC.SSD550 is a 2 -channel delay featuring a delay time of 5 to 50 ms switchable to 100 ms. Has a 90 dB (A -weighted) S/N ratioand a frequency response of 20 Hz to 8 kHz. Contains a built- in mix and surround decoders. Occupies 2 rack -spaces.

Price: $869.00

CROSSOVERSALTEC LANSING CORP15594A is a low pass crossover/equalizer "plug-in" module for the 9400 series power amplifier. It has an 18 dB/octave roll -offpre-programmed at 125 Hz, 500 Hz, 800 Hz, and 1250 Hz. Customer programmable for other frequencies.Price: $80.0015595A is a plug-in module for 9400 series power amplifier which has an 18 dB/octave roll -off pre-programmed at 125 Hz,315 Hz, 500 Hz, 800 Hz, and 1250 Hz. Customer programmable for °tier frequencies.Price: $80.001631A is a single channel 18 dB/octave crossover with selectable crossover point from 100 Hz to 8 kHz, 4 dB of cut/boostat 10 kHz, 25 /Ls to 2 ms variable delay for low-pass output. Dimensions: 1.75 x 19 x 4.8, weight: 4.74 lbs.Price: $598.001632A is a dual channel 2 -way or single channel 3 -way active crossover with user selectable crossover points from 50 Hz to10 kHz, 30/60 Hz HP inputs, hard limiters on all 4 outputs, and sub -modules to customize response, weight: 8 lbs.Price: $1,050.00

ASHLEYXR-1000 is a 24 dB/octave electronic crossover providing stereo 2 -way or mono 3 -way. Has variable filter response which al-

lows tuning -in Linkwitz, Butterworth or other filter performances. Has XLR inputs/outputs and 20 Hz hi -pass filter.

Price: Available upon request.XR-2000 is a 24 dB/octave electronic crossover that can be variously configured as stereo 3 -way, mono 4 or 5 -way, 4 chan-nel 2 -way, etc. Has variable filter response which allows tuning -in Linkwitz. Butterworth or other filter performances. Has XLRinputs/outputs and 20 Hz high-pass filter.Price: Available upon request.

XR-3000 is a 24 dB/octave electronic crossover in a mono 4- way configuration. It features an extra -wide tuning range of 40Hz to 24 Hz for special applications. Has variable filter response which aliows tuning -in Linkwitz, Butterworth or other filter

performances.Price: Available upon request.XR-4000 is a 24 dB/octave electronic crossover in a stereo 4- way version. Features an extra wide tuning range of 40 Hz to24 kHz for special applications. Has variable filter response which a.lows tuning -in Linkwitz, Butterworth or other filter per-formances. Has XLR inputs/outputs and 20 Hz hi -pass filter.Price: Available upon request.XR-22 is a 12 dB/octave electronic crossover with continuously adjustable crossover points in a stereo 2 -way configuration.Output stages have wide range gain adjustment io match power amps aid drive long cable runs. Has state -variable filters.

Price: Available upon request.XR-70 is a 12 dB/octave electronic crossover with continuously adjustable crossover points in a 3 -way configuration. Outputstages have wide range gain adjustment to matcn power amps and drive long cable runs. Has state -variable filters.

Price: Available upon request.

0co

XR-77 is a 12 dB/octave electronic crossover with continuously adjustable crossover points in a stereo 3 -way configuration.Output stages have wide range gain adjustment to match power amps and drive long cable runs. Has state -variable filters.Price: Available upon request.XR-88 is a 12 dB/octave electronic crossover with continuously adjustable crossover points in a stereo 4 -way configuration.Output stages have wide range gain adjustment to match power amps and drive long cable runs. Has state -variable filters.Price: Available upon request.

AUDIO LOGICX324 is a stereo 3 -way, stereo 2 -way with a mono sub woofer, or a mono 4 -way crossover. The unit has 18 dB/octave Butter-worth filters in a state -variable configuration with a switchable 40 Hz high-pass filter.Price: $380.00

X223 is a microprocessor controlled stereo 3 -way, stereo 2 -way, or stereo 2 -way with a mono sub -woofer crossover. The unithas 24 dB/octave Linkwitz-Riley filters in a state -variable configuration.Price: $500.00

CARVINXC1000 is a dual electronic crossover utilizing high-grade ICs for a transparent, uncolored sound. Distortion under 0.01%THD and a dynamic range of 112 dB. Dimensions: 19 x 3.5 x 7, weight: 10 lbs.Price: $299.00 (direct)

CROWN INTERNATIONAL -See our ad on page 7FFX-2 is a 2 -way stereo, 3 -way mono fixed frequency crossover with 18 dB/octave provided. It can function as a mono sub-woofer combining crossover. Dimensions: 0.19 x 6.5 x 1.8, weight: 4 lbs. 5 oz.PIP-XOV allows user to select fixed frequencies, format of the filter and 24 "modes of operation." It allows for bi-amping andtri-amping from inside the amplifier. Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.9 x 3.9, weight: 8.5 oz.Price: $95.00

PIP-SPC provides both a variable 4th order Linkwitz-Riley crossover and an IOC driven dual -band variable -threshold com-pressor. Variable equalization provides "constant directivity" horn equalization and filter assisted box equalization, weight: ap-prox. 8.5 oz.Price: $165.00

PIP -AMC enables the sound contractor to more intricately tune acoustical enclosures; allows the acoustician to preciselymodel the constant directivity horn rolloff. Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.9 x 3.9, weight: approx. 8.5 oz.Price: $165.00

ELECTRO-VOICE, INC. (A Mark IV Company)XEQ-2 is a 2 -way, monophonic, active crossover network that incorporates various 18 dB/octave cross -over frequencies viadifferent plug-in modules. It has switch selectable "Thiele" low -frequency equalization for tuned-port woofer assemblies.Price: Available upon request.

XEQ-3 is a 3 -way, monophonic, active crossover network. It incorporates 2 switch -selectable fourth order Linkwitz-Riley 24dB/octave cross -over hinge points. Accepts "Thiele" low frequency equalization plug-in modules.Price: Available upon request.EX -18 is a dual channel 2 -way, single channel 3 -way electronic crossover with 18 dB/octave filters. Crossover frequencyrange is continuously variable from 100-8 kHz. Has normal/reverse phase switches. Dimensions 1.75 x 19 x 5.Price: Available upon request.

DOD ELECTRONIC CORP.R 835 is a stereo 2 -way or mono 3 -way crossover with 18 dB/octave Butterworth state variable filters. Switching from stereoto mono mode is internal and requires no patching or rewiring.Price: $269.95

LT SOUNDECU -2 is a stereo electronic crossover unit capable of stereo bi-amping as well as stereo tri-amping. Crossover points arecontinuously variable from 70 Hz to 11 kHz. It has 12 dB/octave Butterworth filters, summed mono output for subwooferoperation, individual phase switches on mid and high bands.Price: $295.00

PEAVEY ELECTRONICSV4X is a variable 4 -way frequency dividing network with calibrated controls for low, mid, high, and very high frequencies.Features specially tapered high EQ (switch selectable) and high- and low-pass filters. Balanced XLR and TRS ins/outs in asingle rack -space.Price: $379.99

YAMAHA -See our ad on page 12F1030 is a 2 -way or 3 -way frequency dividing network with 3 outputs, 3 high-pass and 2 low-pass filters. Each filter has aselectable crossover point. Filter slopes are also selectable 12 dB/octave or 18 dB octave, weight: 16.5 lbs.Price: $745.00

F1040 is a 2 -way, 3 -way or 4 -way active frequency dividing network with 4 outputs, 3 high-pass and 3 low-pass filters. Eachfilter has a selectable crossover point. Filter slopes are selectable 12 dB/octave or 18 dB/octave, weight: 17.6 lbs.Price: $920.00

EQUALIZERS

ALTEC LANSING CORPORATION8558B programmable microaudio equalizer has eight memories, 28 1/3 -octave filters with 12 dB of cut/boost, fixed HP/LP fil-ters, electronically balanced in/out (transformer in/out is optional). Has no front panel controls.

Price: $1,198.001753A is a boost/cut 1/2 -octave monaural equalizer with 28 constant -Q filters from 31.5 Hz to 16 kHz. Capable of 12 dB

cut/boost per filter, it has 20 dB broadband gain, variable HP/LP filters and electronically balanced in/out.

Price: $1,096.001750A is a cut only 1/3 octave mono equalizer with 28 constant -Q filters from 31.5 Hz to 16 kHz. It features 15 dB of attenua-

tion per filter, 20 dB of broadband gain, variable HP/LP filters and electronically balanced in/out.

Price: $1,096.00

APPLIED RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (ART)-See our ad on page 3

HD -31 (Model 350) is a single -channel 31 -band graphic equalizer offering 60 mm travel sliders, XLR, TRS, and terminal stripins/outs, "fail-safe" hardware bypass, subsonic/ultrasonic filters, 7.5/15 dB scale switch and "new high -definition" circuitry in

a 2 rack- space package.Price: $425.00HD -15 (Model 340) is a dual -channel, 15 -band graphic equalizer offering 60 mm travel sliders, TRS and terminal stripins/outs, "fail-safe" hardware bypass, subsonic/ultra sonic filters and "new high- definition" circuitry in a 2 rack -space pack-

age.Price: $425.00IEQ-31 (Model 300) is a single -channel, 31 -band graphic equalizer with 'SmartCurve," which eliminates band interaction. Ithas balanced ins/outs provided by TRS phone jacks and terminal strip. Unit is MIDI controllable with RS232 option available.

Price:$829.00IEQ-31 (Satellite Model 310) is a single channel 31 -band programmable EQ which is controlled by the Model 300. Up to 15satellites may be used with the controller. Satellite has no front panel interface making it ideal for fixed installations. Fits

single -rack space.Price: $629.00IEQ-15 (Model 270) is a single channel 15 -band programmable EQ with "SmartCurve," which can control up to 15 satellites.It has 128 preset locations, is MIDI controllable, and has an RS232 interface option, packaged in a single -rack space.

Price: $629.00IEQ-15 (Model 280) is a single channel 15 band p-ogrammable EQ controlled by Model 270. No front panel controls make itideal for tamper -proof installation. Fills a single -rack space.Price: $429.00

ASHLEYPQ -66 is a stereo, 4 -band parametric equalizer with center frequency tunable over a 5.5 octave range. It has adjustable band-width from 3 1/3 to 1/2o -octave (maximum Q of 35), master and individual band in/out bypass switching, 20 dB headroom.

Price: Available upon request.PQ -63 is a single channel, 3 -band parametric equalizer with center frequency tunable over a 5.5 -octave range. It has ad-

justable bandwidth from 3 1/3 to 1/20 octave (maximum Q of 35), master in/out bypass switching, 20 dB headroom.

Price: Available upon request.GQ-215 offers 2 channels of 2/3 octave, 15 -band graphic equalization. It features a peak -indicating LED, a fixed, switchable40 Hz subsonic filter and a boost/cut range of ±15 dB. Weinbridge filters for accurate response.Price: Available upon request.GQ-131 is a mono 1/3 octave, 31 -band graphic equalizer, incorporating a switchable subsonic filter tunable between 8 Hzand 200 Hz. Boost/cut range selectable at ±6 or ±15 dB. Has 9 -position, 3 -color LED level meter.


GQ-231 offers 2 separate channels of 1/3 octave, 31 -band graphic equalization each incorporating the same features as the

GQ-131.Price: Available upon request.

AUDIO LOGICSC131 is a graphic equalizer offering 31-1/3 octave, ISO -centered frequency bands with either 12 or 6 dB of cut only in a 2 -rack space. Contains XLR, TRS, barrier strip connections, and variable frequency high- and low-pass filters.

Price: Available upon request.SC215 graphic equalizer offers 2 channels of 15 2/3 octave bands of equalization. Each band has 12 dB of cut or boost anda selectable range of 6 dB cut or boost in a compact 2 rack -space size.


CARVINEQ2029 1/3 -octave graphic equalizer utilizes advanced active band circuitry and Butterworth ultra and subsonic filters. Forboth professional and home use. Dimensions: 19 x 3.5 x 7, weight: 11 lbs.Price: $299.00 (direct)

DOD ELECTRONICS CORP.R231 graphic equalizer is a 2 -channel, graphic equalizer with 31 -1/3 -octave bands per channel in a 2 rack -space chassis,with 12 dB of cut or boost per band. THD is 0.01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz, -±0.05 dB.Price: $599.95

R430C is a dual channel 15 -band graphic equalizer offering up tp 12 dB of boost or cut in a single rack-space size. Thebands are 1/3 -octave ISO centered and are detented at 0 dB. THD is 0,01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz,±0.05 dB.Price: $359.95

R431C is a single channel, 31 -band graphic equalizer offering up to 12 dB of boost or cut in a single -rack space. The bandsare 1/3 -octave ISO centered, detented at 0 dB. THD is 0.01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz, ±0.05 dB.Price: $359.95

R831C graphic equalizer is 31-1/3 octave, ISO centered frequency bands with 12 dB of boost or cut in a 2 rack space size.Sliders are long throw and center detented at 0 dB. THD is 0.01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz, ±0.05dB.

Price: $344.95

R830C is a dual channel, 15 -band graphic equalizer with 12 dB boost/cut in a double rack space with 45 mm long throw slid-ing pots. Bands are 2/3 -octave ISO centered. THD is 0.01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz, -±0.05 dB.Price: $349.95

R815C is a single channel 15 -band graphic equalizer offering 12 dB of boost/cut with long -throw sliding pots in a doublerack space. THD is 0.01% and frequency response is from 18 Hz to 22 kHz, ±0.05 dB.Price: $214.95

ELECTRO-VOICE, INC. (A MARK IV COMPANY), INC.EVT-2230 is a single channel combining filter 1/4 -octave equalizer with 27 ISO center frequencies from 40 Hz to 16 kHz. Fea-tures a high-pass filter, output control, EQ in/out switch and a security cover. Fits double rack space.Price: Available upon request.EVT-2210 is a stereo one -octave equalizer with identical 10 band channels capable of 12 dB boost/cut. Center detented slidefaders with separate output control and EQ in/out switch for each channel. Security cover included.Price: Available upon request.2710 is a 1/3 -octave equalizer with built-in pink -noise generator. It has 27 constant -range filters on ISO standard frequenciesfrom 40 Hz to 16 kHz. Incorporates variable high pass filter and variable low pass filter.Price: Available upon request.

LT SOUNDPEQ-2 is a dual -channel, 4 -band parametric equalizer with selectable peak/dip or shelving response on upper or lowerbands, overall hard -wire bypass and individual bypass on middle 2 bands. Bandwidth variable from 0.15 to 2 octaves.Price:$595.00

PEQ-1 is a single -channel version of the PEQ-2. Utilizes a single -rack space.Price: $349.00

ORBAN764A unites digital control and "fourth generation" analog audio in an expandable parametric equalizer system. Three largeknobs control rotary digital encoders for adjusting filter parameters. Capable of addressing and recalling 99 preset configura-tions.

Price: $2,495.00 per 2 -channel unit.674A is a full parametric with "intuitive" graphic controls. It offers 8 bands of (stereo) fully parametric control in a 3 -rack unitspace.Price: $1,299.00

672A is a full parametric with "intuitive" graphic controls. It offers 8 bands (mono) fully parametric control in a 3 -rack unitspace.Price: $689.00

642B features 2 channels comprised of 4 bands each of constant Q parametric equalization with "totally non -interactive" filterbands. Each band has separate bypass switch and both coarse and fine tuning potentiometers.Price: $995.00

OXMOORDEQ-29 is a 1/3 -octave programmable equalizer without a physical control panel. Adjustments up to 16 units can be madeusing TWEEQ software and a Macintosh computer. Once unit is programmed, 8 memory locations can be recalled bysimple contact closure.

CO Price: Available upon request.

ROLANDE-660 is a fully programmable, digital parametric EQ storing 99 settings in memory. Operates as a 2 -channel 4 -band EQ orsingle -channel 8 -band EQ. Has analog, AES/EBU and digital I/O connections.Price: $1,995.00

PEAVEY ELECTRONICSPME-4 is a parametric equalizer featuring state -variable filters, variable Q with a range of 1/6 to 2 octaves.Outputs include nor-mal EQ out jack and a special 40 Hz high-pass output for instrument preamp applications. Unit fills one standard rack -space.Price: $199.99PME-8 is a stereo parametric equalizer retaining all the features of the PME-4 in a dual configuration. There are 4 parametricbands and a front panel bypass for each channel. Boost/cut range is 18 dB. Packaged in a 2 rack -space unit.Price: $349.99AEQ-2800 is a MIDI automated 28 -band 1/3 -octave graphic equalizer. It has a 40 x 2 character "easy read" liquid crystal dis-play, slave capability controllable from master and MIDI controllable sliders allowing 12 dB boost/cut in 1 dB steps or 6 dBboost/cut in 0.5 dB steps.Price: $449.99EQ-31 is a 31 band equalizer on standard ISO frequency centers. It is switch -selectable for 6 or 12 dB boost/cut, has varia-ble high and low cut filters, bypass switch and a broadband level control with 24 dB input/output capability.Price: $309.99EQ-215 is a dual 15 -band 2/3 -octave equalizer with 6 or 12 dB boost/cut capability, independently selectable bypass, rangeand high- and low-cut filters. It has balanced XLR aid 1/4 -in. outputs, independent broadband level controls, and takes asingle rack -space.Price: $359.99

SOUNDCRAFTSMEN -See our ad on page 19AE2000 equalizer real-time analyzer incorporates differential /comparator measurement system for ±0.1 dB accuracy. It is adual -channel 10 -band equalizer with built-in pink -noise generator, automatic octave scanning and an S/N ratio of 114 dB.Price: $849.00PRO-EQ22 is a C-MOS "0.1 dB differential/comparator" octave equalizer which provides a fast, accurate method of balanc-ing input -to -output voltages visually, regardless of equalization curve selected. S/N ratio of 114 dB, with 80 dB of channelseparation.Price:$349.00PRO-EQ44 is a C-MOS "0.1 dB differential/comparator" 1/2 -octave equalizer containing 2 independent channels of equaliza-tion. Standard ISO center frequencies from 40 Hz to 1 kHz are at 1/3 octaves, but from 1 k to 16 k frequencies are at 2/3 oc-

taves.

Price: $549.00

TASCAM PROFESSIONAL DIVISION (TEAC CORPORATION OF AMERICA) -See our ad on Cover IIIPE -40 parametric equalizer is rack -mountable and has 4 EQ channels, each with 4 EQ bands: 800 Hz to 16 kHz, 500 Hz to10 kHz, 200 Hz to 4 kHz, and 40 Hz to 800 Hz. Each band has frequency, Q (bandwidth) and gain controls.Price: $650.00GA -30 is a 2 -channel graphic equalizer providing 10 linear equalization controls with 12 dB boost or cut in a rack -mountchassis. Also included is switchable EQ defeat and tape monitor controls.Price: $350.00GE -20B is a 2 -channel graphic equalizer with 10 linear equalization controls per channel, each providing up to 12 dB ofboost/cut. Each channel also has separate 12 dB/octave high-pass and low-pass filters.Price: $325.00

SYMETRIXSX201 is a parametric equalizer/notch filter featuring +15 dB boost and -30 dB cut capability, unbalanced preamp input,balanced line -level inputs and outputs.Price: $239.00

YAMAHA -See our ad on page 12GQ10316111 is a single -channel 1/3 -octave graphic equalizer occupying a single rack space. It has 31 bands of EQ, each with12 dB boost/cut. it has a 22 k ohm input impedance for easy interfacing and an output source impedance of 600 ohms.

Price: $345.00Q1027 is a single -channel 1/2 -octave graphic equalizer, featuring 27 bands of EQ at ISO frequencies, calibrated 1 dB steppedinput level control, selectable high-pass filter (40 Hz or 80 Hz) and both XLR aid 1/4 -in. jacks for both input and output.Price: $1,095.00Q2031A is a dual channel 1/2 -octave equalizer with 31 bands of EQ on ISO -frequencies from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, variable highpass filters on each channel and an octal socket for optional BRT-15K transformers. Electronically balanced XLR and 1/4 -in.unbalanced inputs.Price: $695.00DEQ7 is a digital equalizer featuring 30 preset programs which can be edited and stored in 60 RAM locations. Includesgraphic, parametric, tone, notch filter, variable band pass, dynamic PEQ, and filter programs. Has direct digital inputs andoutputs.Price: $1,395.00 CO

TAPE RECORDERS

co

FOSTEX -See our ad on page 9X-26 is a 6-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running at 1-7/s in./sec. with a frequency responseof 40 Hz to 12.5 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.15%, and a S/N ratio of 58 dB (A -weighted).Price: $449.00

160 is a 4-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running at 34/4 in./sec with a frequency responseof 40 Hz to 14 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.1%, and a S/N ratio of 70 dB. THD is 1.5% at 1 kHz.Price: $ 840.00260 is a 6-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running at 3-3/4 in./sec with a frequency responseof 40 Hz to 14 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.1%, and a S/N ratio of 70 dB. THD is 1.5% at 1 kHz.Price: $1,295.00

R8 is a 8-channel/8-track reel-to-reel recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running 1/4 -in. tape at 15 in./sec. with a frequency re-sponse of 40 Hz to 18 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.06%, and a S/N ratio of 78 dB. THD is 1.0% at 1 kHz.Price: $2,800.00

E2 is a 2-channel/2-track reel-to-reel recorder. It is a 3 -head machine running 1/4 -in. tape at 15 in./sec. with a frequency re-sponse of 30 Hz to 20 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.05%, and a S/N ratio of 74 dB. THD is 1.0% at 1 kHz.Price: $3795.00

E8 is an 8-channel/8-track reel-to-reel recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running at 15 in./sec. with a frequency response of 40Hz to 18 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.05%, and a S/N ratio of 80 dB. THD is 1.0% at 1 kHz.Price: $4,495.00

E16 is a 16-channel/16-track reel-to-reel recorder. It is a 2 -head machine running 1/2 -in. tape at 15 in./sec. with a frequency re-sponse of 40 Hz to 18 kHz, a flutter rate of 0.05%, and a S/N ratio of 80 dB. THD is 1.0% at 1 kHz.Price: $7,995.00

D20 is a 2-channel/2-track DAT recorder. It is a 4 -head machine running at 8.15 mm/s with a frequency response of 20 Hz to20 kHz, and a S/N ratio of 90 dB. THD is 0.05% at 1 kHz.Price: $7,995.00

MITSUBISHIX-880 is a 32 -channel digital recorder with a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz (+0.5/-1.0 dB). Running at 30 in./sec.(±10%), it uses 1 -in. tape and weighs approximately 550 lbs. Its power consumption is 2.0 kVA.Price: Available upon request.X -86C and X-86HS are both 2 -channel digital recorders which utilize sampling at 96 kHz. X -86C has a frequency response of20 Hz to 20 kHz, +0.5/-1.0 dB. X-86HS has a frequency response of 20 Hz to 40 kHz (+1.0/-3.0 dB). Both use 1/4 -in. tape,weigh about 220 lbs., and consume about 450 VA.Price: Available upon request.

X-400 is a PCM 16 channel digital recorder using 1/2 -in. tape and running at 30 in./sec.. Its frequency response is 20 Hz to 20kHz (+0.5/-1.0 dB), weight is 485 lbs. and power consumption is 1.8 kVA.Price: Available upon request.

OTARI CORPORATIONDTR-900-32 is a 32 -channel digital tape recorder utilizing 1 -in. tape with an up to 14 -in. reel -size. It has 4 heads, 0 wow andflutter, and a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz (+0.5 dB/ -1.0 dB). It has a 9600 Hz PLL capstan motor and 2 servo 1/2H.P. DC reel motors.Price: $150,000.00

MTR-10CT is a 2 -channel recorder with center -track time code utilizing 1/4 -in. tape. It has 4 heads, a DC servo -controlled9600 Hz PLL capstan and DC servo controlled, high -torque reel motors. Frequency response is 42 Hz -29 kHz (30 in./sec.)and S/N ratio is 74 dB at 30 in./sec.Price: $12,095.00

MTR-100A is a 24 -track recorder utilizing 2 -in. tape. It features automatic alignment, a quartz PLL DC brush -type, direct -drivecapstan motor. Wow and flutter at 30 in./sec.. is 0.04%, frequency response is 50 Hz -25 kHz, ±2 dB, and S/N ratio is 70 dBat 1040 nWb/m.Price: $59,950.00

MX -55N is a 2 -channel, 4 -head compact recorder utilizing 1/4 -in. tape. It features a DC servo -controlled capstan, a frequencyresponse of 30-22 kHz (±2 dB) at 15 in./sec. and an unweighted S/N ratio of 69 dB at 1040 nWb/m. Mic input impedance is10 k ohms.Price: $3,895.00

MX -70 can be variously configured as an 8 -track, 8 pre -wired for 16, and 16 -track recorder using 1 in. tape. All feature DCservo reel motors and brushless a DC capstan motor (crystal referenced). Frequency response is 50-22 kHz (+2/-3 dB). Un-weighted S/N is 70 dB.Price: $17,200.00 to $21,650.00

MX -80 comes in both 24 and 32 -track versions. Both utilize 9600 Hz PLL capstan motor, microprocessor controlled, 2 servo143 HP DC reel motors, and 3 heads. Signal to noise at 30 in./sec. is 67 dB (1040 nWb/m), frequency response is 60 Hz to22 kHz (±2 dB).Price: $33,850.00 to $39,150.00MK -III -8 is an 8 -channel recorder utilizing 1/2 -in. tape. It has a DC servo -controlled capstan motor, 2 induction reel motorsand 3 heads. Wow and flutter measures 0.04% at 15 in./sec. Frequency response is 40 Hz -22 kHz (±2 dB).Price: $5,495.00MTR-90-1I is available in various configurations: 1 in. 8- channel, 2 in. 16 -channel, 2 in. 16 -channel pre -wired for 24 -channeland 2 in. 24 channel. Frequency response at 250 nW/m is 45 Hz -29 kHz (30 in./sec.). S/N ratio at 1240 nW/m is 78 dB (30

in./sec.) All configurations are 3 -head machines.Price: Available upon request.

SONY PRO AUDIO -See our ad on page 5APR -24 is a 24 -channel analog recorder utilizing 2-.n. tape. It features amorphous steel heads and "DC constant tension de-sign." Frequency response at 30 in./sec. is 48 Hz - 25 kHz (+0.75 /-3.0 dB). S/N is 70 dB at 30 in./sec. and 66 dB at 15in./sec. Includes remote control with stand.Price: $45,500.00APR -5000 is a 2 -channel analog recorder which can be purchased in various configurations (including an IEC center -tracktime -code version). The 5002W version features a 50 Hz -28 kHz (+0.75/-3.0 dB) frequency response and a S/N ratio of 65dB. Other versions features 9 -pin serial interface.Prices: From $8,875.00 to $11,950.00.PCM-2500 is a 2 -channel, 2 -head DAT recorder whose running speed is 8.15 mm/s. It has a S/N ratio of 90 dB and 0.05%THD. Frequency response is 2 Hz to 22 kHz. It is driven by a servo type motor, has LED record indicators and measures 17x 4 x 16.6 in, weight: 24 Ibs.,11 oz.Price: $3,550.00PCM-2000 is a 2 -channel, 2 -head DAT recorder whose running speed is 8.15 mm/s. It has a S/N ratio of 90 dB and 0.07%THD. Frequency response is 2 Hz to 22 kHz. It is driven by a servo type motor, has LCD record indicators and measures 8.4x 3 x 7.6 in, weight: 8 Ibs.,13 oz.Price: $5,000.00TCD-D10 PRO is a 2 -channel, 2 -head DAT recorder whose running speed is 8.15 mm/s. It has a S/N ratio of 85 dB and0.08% THD. Frequency response is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. It is driven by a servo type motor, has LCD record indicators and meas-ures 10 x 2.3 x 7.6 in, weight: 4 Ibs.7 oz.Price: $3,550.00

STUDERA820 series includes 24-, 16-, and 8 -track analog recorders which feature automatic and simultaneous audio alignment forall channels with alignment parameters stored in non-volatile memory. Has a "menu -programmable" transport and optionalDolby SR or Telcom C4 noise reduction.Price: $71,275.00 (24 -track w/o noise reduction.)A827-24 is a 24 -track microprocessor controlled recorder featuring phase compensated MDA controlled amplifiers withswitchable Dolby HX Pro and menu -programmable transport functions. Parallel and serial RS232/422 ports for easy integra-tion into editing systems.Price: $47,500.00A820 2/2 VUK is a 2 -track master recorder featuring the same processor control for audio and tape transports and the sametransport and drive assembly as the A820-24. Frequency response is 40 Hz to 22 kHz (±2 dB).Price: $13,750.00D820X DASH format 2 -channel digital audio recorder offers "twin recording" at 15 in./sec. Transport design features DC -driven spooling and capstan motors. Frequency response is 10 Hz to 23 kHz (±0.4 dB.)Price: $19,000.00A812 2/2 Time -Code (option) VUK is a compact recorder especially suited for broadcast application. Featuring the same pro-cessor control for audio and tape transport as the A 820, it is available with or without overbridge. Unweighted S/N ratio is

70 dB.Price: $14,750.00A807 series of 2- and 4 -channel recorders are especially suited for broadcast and post -production environments. Features in-clude: tape shuttle wheel, reverse play, right hano edit, tape dump, multi -function tape time and autolocator with pro-

grammable "soft -keys."Price: $8,795.00 (2 channel), $11,495.00 (4 -channel)

Revox Pr99 MKIII is a 2 -track production recorder featuring a real-time counter that reads both plus and minus time, autosearch -to -cue for any preselected address, and auto repeat for continuous replay. Also available in "playback only" configu-ration.Price: $2,995.00Revox C270 series 2-, 4-, and 8 -channel recorders all feature microprocessor -based control logic (including precise search -to -cue), and "one -hand" editing under full servo control. Dolby HX PRO and RS 232 interface is standard in this series.Price: From $3,995.00 (2 -channel) to $7,995.00 (8 -channel).A721 professional cassette recorder features a 4 motor, dual capstan, die-cast transport and head block with Dolby B and Cnoise reduction as well as Dolby HX PRO. Automatic microprocessor control self -alignment for level, bias and EQ.

coPrice: $2,995.00 cir

TASCAM PROFESSIONAL DIVISION (TEAC CORPORATION OF AMERICA) -See our ad on Cover III688 Midistudio is a 10 -channel, 8 -track recorder/mixer with 20 inputs, each with independent gain, pan, and effects controls.Has built-in MIDI -to -tape synchronizer and bi-directional shuttle dial. S/N measures 90 dB with built-in dbx Type II NR.Price: $3,299.00

644 Midistudio is an 8 -channel, 4 -track recorder/mixer with 16 inputs, each with independent gain, pan, and effects controls.Built-in MIDI -to tape synchronizer and bi-directional shuttle dial. S/N measures 90 dB with built-in dbx Type II NR.Price: $1,495.00

TSR-8 is an 8 -channel, 8 -track recorder/reproducer using 1/2 -in. tape. It is a 2 -head, 2 slotless DC motor machine. Tapespeed is 15 in./sec., line input is 10 k ohms unbalanced and S/N measures 108 dB A -weighted with built-in dbx Type I NR.Price: Available upon request.MSR-16 is a 16 -channel, 16 -track recorder/reproducer using 1/2 -in. tape. It is a 2 -head machine featuring a phase -locklooped DC drive capstan motor with a ceramic shaft. Tape speed is 7.5 and 15 in./sec. S/N measures 108 dB A -weightedwith built-in dbx Type I NR.Price: Available upon request.ATR-60/16 is a 16 -channel, 16 -track recorder/reproducer using 1 in. tape format. It is a 3 -head machine featuring a phase -lock looped DC drive capstan motor with a ceramic shaft. Tape speed is 7.5 and 15 in./sec. S/N measures 108 dB A-

weighted with built-in dbx Type I NR.Price: Available upon request.MSR-24 is a 24 -channel, 24 -track recorder/reproducer using 1 -in. tape. It is a 2 -head featuring a phase -lock looped DC drivecapstan motor with a ceramic shaft. Tape speed is 7.5 and 15 in./sec. S/N measures 108 dB A -weighted with built-in dbxType I NR.

Price: Under $15,000.00

112 is a 2 -channel, 2 -track recorder/reproducer. It is a 2 -head, 3 -motor machine with a tape speed of 1.875 in./sec.Frequency response is 25-19 kHz ±3 dB (metal tape) and S/N is 78 dB with Dolby C in. Unit is rack -mountable.Price: $679.00238 Syncaset is an 8 -channel, 8 -track standard cassette recorder/reproducer. It is a 2 -head, 3 motor machine with a tapespeed of 3.75 in./sec. Frequency response is 30-16 kHz and S/N measures 54 dB with dbx out. Unit is rack -mountable.Price: $2,295.00

UHER OF AMERICACR1600 is a portable stereo cassette 4 -track recorder. Features include: auto-reverse operation, 2 speeds, 3 heads, Dolby B,switchable ALC, full remote control, built-in voice activation system. Dimensions: 9 x 2 x 7 in, weight: 7 lbs.Price: $1,799.00

CR1601 is a 4 -track monaural portable cassette recorder. Features include: 3 speeds (14/32, 1W16, 1-7/8 in./sec.), switchableALC, solenoid control, full remote control, voice activation system. Dimensions: 9 x 2 x 7 in, weight: 7 lbs.Price: $1,799.00

1200 Report Synchro is a portable open -reel full -track monaural recorder with pilot track. Speed is 7.5 in./sec. Features in-clude: 3 heads, belt drive, 2 mixable microphone inputs, and selectable equalization. Dimensions: 11 x 3.5 x 9, weight: 8 lbs.Price: $5,049.00

6000 Report Universal is a portable open -reel, 2 -track monaural recorder. Features include 4 speeds, 3 heads, solenoid con-trol, belt drive, voice activation and "memory pulse facility". Dimensions: 11 x 3.5 x 9 Weight: 8 lbs.Price: $2,150.00

4000 Report Monitor AV is a portable open -reel 2 -track mono recorder. Features include: 4 speeds, 3 heads, belt drive, micinputs (200 ohms), switchable ALC and LED function indicators. Dimensions: 11 x 3.5 x 9, weight: 3 lbs.Price: $1,665.00

4200 Report Monitor is a portable open -reel 2 -track stereo recorder. Features include: 4 speeds, 3 heads, belt drive, 2 VUmeters, 200 ohm mic inputs and switchable ALC. Dimensions: 11 x 3.5 x 9, weight: 8 lbs.4400 Report Monitor is a portable open -reel, 4 -track stereo recorder. Features include: 4 speeds, 3 heads, belt drive, 2 VUmeters, 200 ohm mic inputs, switchable ALC and LED function indicators. Dimensions and weight same as 4200.Price: $1,779.00

or, YAMAHA -See our ad on page 12cr9 C300 is a "professional quality" 2 -channel, 3 -head cassette recorder featuring 12 -layer laminated amorphous heads, a- double -gap ferrite erase head and a closed -loop dual capstan transport. With dbx noise reduction "on," S/N is 95 dB.

8-3 Price: $995.00

t MT100 is a 4-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder with self-contained mixdown capability. Motors are DC servo type andO top speed frequency response is 40 Hz -18 kHz. With dbx noise reduction "on," S/N is 85 dB.45 Price: $495.00E MT2X is a 6-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder with self-contained mixdown capability. Motors are DC servo type and

"top speed" frequency response is 20 Hz -18 kHz. With dbx noise reduction "on," S/N is 85 dB.a_a, Price: $845.00

MT3X is a 6-channel/4-track cassette mixer/recorder with self-contained mixdown capability, "comprehensive" monitor sys--c3 tern and programmable auto punch -in. Motors are DC servo type and top speed frequency response is 40 Hz -18 kHz. With

dbx noise reduction "on," S/N is 85 dB.co Price: $995.00

Altec Lansing Corp.

10500 West Reno Ave.

Oklahoma City, OK 73128

Applied Research and Technology

215 Tremont StreetRochester, NY 14608

Ashley Audio Inc.

100 Fernwood Ave.

Rochester, NY 14621

Audio Logic

(see DOD)

Carvin Corp.1155 Industrial Ave.

Escondido, CA 92025

Crown International, Inc.1718 W. Mishawaka Rd.

Elkhart, IN 46517

DOD -Digitech-Audio Logic

5639 S. Riley St.

Salt Lake City, UT 84102

Electro-Voice, Inc.

600 Cecil St.

Buchanan, MI 49107

ADDRESSES

Fostex Corp. of America15431 Blackburn Ave.

Norwalk, CA 90650

Mitsubishi Pro Audio-NeveBerkshire Industrial ParkBethel, CT 06801

LT Sound

7980 LT Parkway

Lithonia, GA 30058

Orban645 Bryant St.San Francisco, CA 91340

Otari Corp.378 Vintage Park Dr.

Foster City CA 94404

Oxmoor Corp.

237 Oxmoor Circle

Birmingham, AL 35209

Peavy Electronics Corp.

711 A St.

Meridian, MS 39301

Roland Corp.7200 Dominion Circle

Los Angeles, CA 90040

Sony-Pro Audio1600 Queen Anne Rd.

Teaneck, NJ 07666

Sound Concepts27 Newell Rd.

Brookline, MA 02146

Soundcraftsmen2200 So. Ritchey

Santa Ana, CA 92705

Studer-ReVox

1425 Elm Hill PikeNashville, TN 37210

Symetrix Inc.4211 24th Ave. W.

Seattle, WA 98199

Tascam-Teac Corp. of America

7733 Telegraph Rd.

Montebello, CA 90640

Uher of America

7067 Vineland Ave.

N. Hollywood, CA 91605

Yamaha-Pro AudioP.O. Box 6600

Buena Park, CA 90622

Cr)COCr)

FOR SALE

For Sale: Neumann SM2 micro-phone with power supply. ContactMartins Saulespurens at (805)687-0327.

How To Produce Great Radio Com-mercials, by Brian Battles. Thisunique four -cassette package con-tains essential tips and advice thatteach you how to set up your ownlucrative advertising productionbusiness, and the presentationshowcases sample spots usingmany of the techniques describedin this column, and much more.To order your copy, please send acheck or money order for $99.95(includes domestic shipping) to:Porkpie Productions, P.O. Box176, Colchester, CT 06415-0176.

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Worth writing for.If you're looking for some goodreading, you've just found it. Thefree Consumer InformationCatalog.The Catalog lists about 200 federalpublications, many of them free.They can help you eat right,manage your money, stayhealthy, plan your child'seducation, learn about federalbenefits and more.So sharpen your pencil. Write forthe free Consumer InformationCatalog. And get reading worthwriting for.Consumer Information CenterDepartment RWPueblo, Colorado 81009

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Closing date is the firstof the second monthpreceding the date ofissue.

Rates are $1.00 perword with a $25.00minimum. Boxed adsare $40.00 per columninch. db Box Numbersare $8.50 additional forwording "DepartmentXX" plus $1.50additional for postageand handling.

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Peette, Pt44(4... & HAfre4,z4Aii

SAVET IN SAN FRANCISCO

SAVET (Save EntertainmentTechnology), organized to save en-tertainment technology from extinc-tion, produced a retrospective dis-play at the San Francisco High EndHiFi Show sponsored by Stereophilemagazine.

Started by Jack Mullin, Peter Ham-mer, and Shelley Herman, SAVEThas been collecting artifacts forseveral years. With the addition ofJack Mullin's collection, it had itsfirst official outing on April 20-23,1989.

Entitled "A Museum of High EndAudio, 1877-1957," the displaytraced the history of entertainmentin the home, including a disc-

operated music box of the 1800s, areplica of Edison's first cylinder re-corder, the Berliner "Trademark"disc player (complete with Nipper),some early disc and cylinder recordplayers, the Orthophonic Victrola, anacoustic record player designed byBell Laboratories that was the first"HiFi;" the first electrical recordings

Ray Dolby and loan Allen ofDolby Laboratories have beenawarded an Oscar by the Board ofGovernors of the Academy of MotionPicture Arts and Sciences. It was pre-sented to them for their continuouscontributions to motion picturesound through the research anddevelopment of Dolby LaboratoriesInc.

Sigma Sound founder Joe Tar-sia has announced that the assets ofSigma's New York studios have been

(1925), and the first single groovestereo recordings (1931).

Among the magnetic recordersshown were early wire recorders andthe AEG Megnatophon tape ma-chine, which still worked, that Mullinbrought back from Germany in 1945.That modified AEG unit inspired thetape recording industry here in theU.S. Other milestones exhibited in-cluded: a Brush Soundmirror, thefirst home tape recorder in the U.S.;an Ampex model 200 from 1947,America's first professional tape re-corder; a Magnecord PT -6, an earlyportable professional tape recorder;and Ampex's Model 612, the firsthome stereo tape player.

Also on exhibit was a collection ofType 77 RCA broadcast micro-phones, a two -arm example of anearly stereo record player that didn'twork very well, and a Macintosh 20 -watt amplifier using a pair of 6V6 GTtubes in the output stage, an early ex-ample of "High End HiFi."

purchased by M & M Syndications,Inc., headed by Michelle Pruyn.According to Tarsia, "The newowners of Sigma Sound Studiosof New York are committed to theSigma Tradition of delivering thevery best in recording services." Inaddition to Michelle Pruyn, key staffmembers in New York includeGeneral Manager Gary Robbins,Chief Technical Engineer DonCuminale, and ProductionManager Kayla Ritt.

Each group of people to enter theroom was taken on a personal tour ofthe display by either Mullin or Her-man. According to Hammer:"Despite the conventional wisdomthat no one cares about the past, thedesire for knowledge at the displaywas intense. The other reaction was,nostalgia: I used to have one of those,or more often, my (grand)parentshad one of those were the most often-

heard phrases."

The positive reaction to the displayled to donations as well. SAVET wenthome with more equipment than itbrought. When people saw that therewas someone saving this technologythey would go home and bring some-thing back to add to the collection.

Herman said, "The response to thislatest SAVET exhibit, and the exhibitat the AES convention in November1988, shows that people are inter-ested in keeping the knowledge ofour past alive. The public's enthusi-asm justifies the efforts of those whosupport SAVET."

Jacques Robinson, President ofCarillon Technology, Inc., has an-nounced that a formal letter of intentfor the purchase of the dbx Pro-fessional Products Division hasbeen received from AKG Acoustics,Inc., Stamford, Ct., and it has beenaccepted.

Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.'s(BBN) architectural acoustics andenvironmental technologies grouphas recently become Acentech In-corporated, a subsidiary of BBN

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Systems and Technologies Cor-poration. Acentech provides servicesin architectural acoustics, audio-visual systems, noise and vibrationcontrol, air quality, and computer -

aided environmental systems. Thecompany has offices in Cambridge,MA, and Los Angeles, CA.

Gil Nichols has been appointed asthe division leader for Crown Inter-national's North American ampli-fier microphone marketing and salesoperations. The position is part of anewly -instituted organizationalplan designed to facilitate optimumcoordination and cooperation at alllevels of each division within thecompany. A 1966 graduate of Whea-ton College, Nichols was an execu-tive director of an international non-profit organization's Michianabranch before accepting his currentpost at Crown.

Steve Bramberg, former studioowner and manager of several majoreast coast recording facilities has an-nounced the opening of a new busi-ness catering to the needs of theaudio production industry. The NewYork based company STUDIOSUPPORT SERVICES is a refer-ral, representation, consultation,studio time brokerage and produc-tion coordination service aimed atfilling the various needs of studios,producers, engineers, musicians, re-cording labels and managers etc. Hecan be reached at (516) 767-3295.

A Conrad Reeder update-Asa result of her appearance in theJuly/August 1988 Electronic Cot-tage, we are pleased to report thatshe has a cut on the new John Denveralbum, out in July; has her own bandSNAFU, and is playing club dates inthe Nashville area, and has the de-cided interest of several recordlabels. We'll keep you posted, and afollow-up story is in order soon.

Greencorp Magnetics PtyLtd., the leading tape manufacturerin Australia, is entering the tapemarket for the first time in theUnited States, announced StephenL. Green, managing director. FujiiInternational, of Northridge, Cal-ifornia, has been appointed its exclu-sive marketing and sales repre-sentative in the United States.

In response to demand from audioprofessionals, Tascam has added athird sampling rate to its popularDA -50 R-DAT recorder. In additionto sampling at the standard baudrates of 32 kHz and 48 kHz, the Tas-cam digital audio tape deck now re-cords at the rate of 44.1 kHz, permit-ting two -track mastering direct tocompact discs with no additional in-terface required.

The 1988 Senate ProductivityAward, an annual awards programthat recognizes the one company inthe State of Alabama that hasachieved the most significant in-crease in productivity for the year,has been presented to the AmpexRecording Media Corporation,Opelika, Alabama manufacturingcenter.

Paul McGuire, formerly vicepresident of marketing at Electro-Voice, was recently promoted to theposition of executive vice president.McQuire assumes operating re-sponsibility for the engineering,manufacturing, sales and marketingfunctions of Electro-Voice in theUnited States and Canada. Inanother move the company an-nounced the appointment of ClaudeKleiman as market developmentmanager for wireless microphones.The announcement was made byJim Long, E -V director of market-ing. Working in conjunction with theE -V market development managers,Kleiman will be responsible for themarketing and sales of high-per-formance wireless microphone sys-tems-under both Vega and Electro-Voice brand names-to allprofessional audio markets.

Richard Salter has been ap-pointed to the position of Develop-ment Director at Focusrite AudioEngineering Limited by the com-pany's new owner Phil Dudderidge.Salter was previously in charge ofdigital audio product development asSony Broadcast in the United King-dom, and was a member of the origi-nal design team of Solid State Logic'sS1 -4000E console.

In a major move to support the re-cently added Mitsubishi professionaldigital audio product line, Neve an-nounced the promotion of RickPlushner to the newly created posi-tion of National Sales Manager forPCM Products. The announcement

was made by Barry J. Roche, Presi-dent of Neve North America.

Aphex Systems has moved theirheadquarters to a new facility in SunValley, California, more than dou-bling their physical space. "We hadreached the point of having no roomfor expansion in our North Holly-wood facility" explained AphexPresident Marvin Caesar."Within the past year or so, we havevirtually doubled our business. Thishas come through increased salesfrom our signal processing equip-ment, the addition of our new MIDIproducts, and new productsdeveloped around our VCA. In addi-tion, we are building Aphexdeveloped surround sound decodersfor Proton. "The new address forAphex is 11068 Randall Street, SunValley, California 91352. They can bereached at (818) 767-2929.

Mark IV Industries has ac-quired the assets of Electro Sound,Inc., a division of Electro SoundGroup. The Electro Sound audiotape duplication hardware divisionwill become part of the product offer-ings of Mark N Audio, which in-cludes Gauss, the world leader in themanufacture of high-speed aassettetape duplication systems and equip-ment. Robert D. Pabst, the head ofMark N Audio, said the newly -ac-quired Electro Sound division willcontinue to manufacture andmarket tape duplicating systems inits facility in Sunnyvale, California,and will report operationally toGauss.

39th Street Music has upgrad-ing their studio to a 56 input SSLconsole with G -Series computersand total recall. A Studer A800 willalso be added, giving the studio 48 -

track capability.

Telarc International, based inCleveland, Ohio, announced the ex-clusive world-wide distributionagreement with Digital MusicProducts, Inc. (DMP) of Stamford,Connecticut. The philosophy of ap-proach to recording, which is sharedby the two companies, provided theincentive for the agreement andproved to be a natural. The agree-ment lets DMP improve its distribu-tion in both domestic and inter-national markets, and at the sametime provides Telarc with expansioninto the jazz market.

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Shure L Seriesbrings reliability to affordable wireless.

Why take chances with anything else?If you're providing wireless micro-

phone systems to churches, schools, orother value -conscious users, you need reliable

equipment you can sell at an affordable price-andmake a profit doing it.

That's what the new L Series from Shure is all about.The L Series sets a new standard of value in its pricerange, offering features, performance and reliabilityother "economy" systems can't match.

We didn't forget the details.Designed and built by Shure in the U.S.A., L Series

systems include many of the features that set profes-sional -quality wireless systems apart from the "toys."L Series receivers are sturdy, metal -cased, and rack-

mountable. Antennas are detachable and may beplaced in remote locations, providing excellent per-formance in situations where many other wirelesssystems have trouble.

Our LI Body -Pack Transmitter has features like aseparate audio mute switch and a universal 4 -pin"Tiny QG" connector that accepts a variety of micro-phone and musical instrument sources. And L Series

lavalier systems come with the 839W, a reliable Shurecondenser microphone designed for clear, naturalvocal pickup.

'Performance meets economy.Even though L Series components are economically

priced, they incorporate sophisticated RF technology.The L4 Diversity Receiver utilizes "intelligent"MARCADTM circuitry to monitor signals from its twoindependent RF sections, blending them in the opti-mum proportion-not merely switching them. Theresult is reliable, uninterrupted audio with no clicks,no pops. And all L Series systems feature Shure"Mirror Image" companding, plus high -gain, low -

noise MOSFETs, a high-fidelity quadrature detector,and a 3 -pole Chebyshev audio low-pass filter. It alladds up to outstanding audio quality with exceptionalfreedom from noise and distortion.

Why risk callbacks with anything else?Other systems may not meet expectations. But you

can recommend a Shure L Series system with confi-dence. So why risk callbacks-and your reputation-with anything else?

For more information about the Shure L Series, call Shure Customer Services at (312) 866-2553.

THE SHIIR,E° WIRELESS

Aa&ziLlowau.soTHE SOUND OF THE PROFESSIONALS'...WORLDWIDE

222 Hartrey Avenue, Evanston, IL 60202-3696


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