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by Steve Harvey

The battle of the blue-laser formatshas begun in earnest, with Blu-rayDisc (BD) and HD DVD (HD) soft-

ware and hardware finally becomingavailable at retail during the past fewmonths. As backers of one or the other—some even of both—formats, the majorfilm studios are the first to market withsoftware product, of course, but for thosecontent creators eager to enter the fray,the good news is that there are profes-sional authoring tools available earlier in

the product rollout than for previous shinydisc formats.

Earlier this year, Dolby Laboratories in-troduced Dolby Media Producer, a suite ofprofessional software tools for those work-ing in multichannel audio for the two newformats, as well as broadcast, initially onlyfor the Mac OS X platform. The company’sfirst such software suite, which comprisesDolby Media Encoder, Dolby Media De-coder and Dolby Media Tools, has beendeveloped for those utilizing the codecs

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Terry andAugsburgerTalk HarmanOutgoing HP presi-dent Mark Terry(pictured) and

incoming presidentBlake Augsburgertalk exclusivelywith PSN.—page 5

The Boy Is BackMonitor engineerMike Baehler(left) and FOH

Kyle Chirnsidekeep the soundbright and sunnyfor Fall Out Boy.—page 66

by Clive YoungNEW YORK, NY—The hottest months aretraditionally the biggest for touring, and2006 seems to be falling right in linewith that assessment. After a surprisinglystrong spring for ticket sales, dozens oftours have taken to the highways andbyways of the U.S., all in search of audi-ences ready to go out and have a goodtime. That, in turn, is keeping the majorsound reinforcement companies busy.

“Touring seems to be experiencing arejuvenation that we began to see lastyear and which is continuing this year,”observed Dave Rat, president of RatSound. “9/11 really seemed to have a

lingering impact on touring.”“I think it’s going to busy summer for

everybody,” concurred Jack Boessneck,executive vice president of Eighth DaySound. “This year’s vibe is that everybodyelse wants to work. Last year, what wasit? It was all Stones and U2; that was allanybody heard about. This year, it’s ‘Oh,let’s go to work.’”

Indeed, it’s a common theory that big-name, big-budget, big-ticket tours curtailthe potential revenues of other, mid-levelproductions, as consumers often have tochoose whether they can afford to see afew moderately priced shows or one big

by Janice Brown

For the first time ever this month, theNAMM Show lands in Austin, TX forits 3-day Summer Session, July 14-

16. Home to as many as 150 live musicvenues, Austin has been called “the livemusic capital of the world,” and, assuch, is a proper host for the annualsummer gathering of music and musictechnology products manufacturers, dis-

tributor/dealers and consultants.MI and pro audio retailers will be in at-

tendance, like Guitar Center and Sweetwa-ter, walking the show floor to catch upwith vendors, see new products, and getthe always valuable previews of productsand technologies soon to come. BillWrightson, vice president, HiTech merchan-dise manager for Guitar Center, reveals his

Summer Touring Starts Up

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dbx DriveRack 4800Network control, flexible configurationand sonic integrity characterize the 4800 Loudspeaker Management System. Page 60.

Austin NAMM A Go

PIRATED SOUNDS:Alan Meyersonstands at the conduc-tor’s position on thescoring stage atTodd-AO during thetracking of the scorefor Pirates of theCaribbean: DeadMan’s Chest.. OverMeyerson’s head is aunique Decca Treeapproach employingRoyer R-122V vacu-um-tube ribbonmicrophones. A totalof 255 tracks werelaid down to twoDigidesign Pro ToolsHD systems andmixed on a EuphonixSystem 5 console.See story on page 24.

prosound news

July 2006

fieldreport:

Special Report: PLUG-INS—page 38

Hi-Def Disc Tools Emerge

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Ivolume 28

no. 7

yet uptempo didn’t clip the input. Speaking of ballad versus uptempo, an-

other truly tricky feature is the Auto Warmthinsert, which exploits the ear’s decreasing sen-sitivity to lower and higher frequencies as theSPL decreases (ala the Fletcher Munson-basedloudness button on your stereo). When a mixdecreases in level (or you turn the stereodown), the tonal balance of the mix is en-

hanced by increasing the low- and high-fre-quency content present in the mix. The con-trol macro for this feature has one button andtwo faders, “Threshold,” “Amount” and“On.” Try it; you’ll like it. This feature is as-signable as an insert on the outputs, whichcan be stereo-linked. I bet it rounds out 70-Volt ceiling speakers in installs just a bit, too.

OK, clearly this can continue for days and Iknow, if you’re interested in this product,you’ve read the cut sheet or sat through themildly scary training modules that dbx has onits website. If not, go here: http://www.dbx-pro.com/Download/index.htm. Download thefirst module, turn off the lights and close youreyes. Tell me this guy doesn’t sound like his

day job is getting your sister to sign over herhouse to his cult. Weird.

Here’s the bottom line: The dbx DriveRack4800 is world-class. It’s highly flexible, itsounds great and it’s extremely easy to use.The GUI appears very stable, and it integratesnicely with other networked Harman devices.If you want to make a significant upgrade toyour systems without replacing all of the re-ally expensive stuff, buy one (or four) ofthese. Spec it in installs with confidence; it’sno longer a choice between something goodor something inexpensive. Get both.

But not the one I have...I’m snatching itand disappearing into the outboard gearprotection program. CYA.

to getting that show through QC.Some key points to help get your mixes

through QC: The traditional mechanical analogVU meter is best. Most mechanical VU metershave a 300-millisecond lag in response, thusthe meter displays an average level over 300mill iseconds, which helps when levelingspeech. It is common to observe a 10 dB or sodifference between the loudest peak and thelowest valley of a given spoken sentence. Thisnatural variance is within the bounds of normalconversation, but most likely outside thebounds of what the average network wants tobroadcast. Instead of using a limiter to controlthe peaks (which can throw off your average),I’ve found it best to go through the show wordby word and turn down the loud syllables andturn up the quiet ones—tedious, yes, but agood way to get consistent levels without over-processing dynamics.

I’ve also found that by mixing the majorityof the dialog and voiceover sections of theshow so that speech reaches about 80 percentof the scale, I’m able to have good Peak, VUand LM-100 values. I have an old mechanicalVU meter with -20 VU at the bottom of thescale and +3 VU at the top. So for me, -2 VU ismy target. That said, a half dozen hits up to 0VU are OK (as long as it doesn’t go over!) andnot much speech below -10 VU. Many modernmeters have “VU mode” which puts the dis-play on a VU scale, but without the 300-mil-lisecond average, they are not very useful formixing for TV.

Communication is without a doubt the mostuseful tool of all. Nothing can replace a conver-sation with a QC technician or supervisor. Try toget to know these people. Call and ask ques-tions, let them know how serious you are aboutsubmitting good work. At the end of the day,it’s better to have them on your team.

Include your own QC document with themasters. Take account of the program’s averagesand peaks on both VU and dB scales. If you havean LM-100, include that value as well. Include alist (with time code) of problem areas that youwere not able to improve. This can keep the QCtech from faulting you for something that can’tbe fixed. There is a difference between dB andVU! Make sure that you keep your scales clear.Hopefully, the QC tech you deal with will under-stand the difference...but no promises.

References:“Dolby LM 100 Broadcast Loudness Meter

Spec Sheet” Dolby Laboratories, 2005.Found at:

www.Dolby.com/professional/pro_audio_Engi-neering/lm100_01.html

“Standards and Practices for Authoring DolbyDigital and Dolby E Bitstreams”www.dolby.com/resources/tech_library/index.cfm

“PBS Technical Operating Specification, 2005edition” Public Broadcasting, 2005.

“General Standard Definition Technical Re-quirements” DCI, 2006.

Aaron Keane is senior engineer/composer atBlazing Music and Sound.

Membership in SPARS, the Society of Profes-sional Audio Recording Services, is open to stu-dio owners, producers, engineers and anyoneelse involved in professional recording. For moreinformation, contact the organization at 800-771-7727, or visit www.spars.com.

psn July 2006

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