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All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not be reproduced by any method without written permission.
Round Up the Usual Suspects
By Roger Nichols
Everyone is back from the AES show, except for maybe the guy on the street
I hired to hijack the Meyer truck full of X-10 speakers, and the load of Sony
DMX-R100 consoles on their way back to Sony. I haven’t heard from him,
so he is either enjoying the spoils in his new project studio located under
the 9th street crossover, or he has been put safely away somewhere where they
are bribing him with regular daily meals so he will snitch on whoever put
him up to it.
(Let’s see now… 97 words so far… guess I gotta think of something
else to say in this month’s column. 117 words.)
AES Stuff
I know you have already heard a lot about this year’s AES show, but here
is a partial list of what I found most interesting.
Little Labs
Lisa Roy, who writes for Pro Sound News, grabbed me and showed me a booth
I had passed by 40 times without noticing. A little booth with a little sign,
“Little Labs.” They were showing two products that I really liked.
One was a direct box/splitter for guitars. You plug in the guitar and the
signal can be sent to the tape machine and up to three guitar amps at the
same time. The signal is split with precision transformers so that there is
no change in impedance when more than one guitar amp is involved. An additional
feature of the box is the ability to send a line level signal from tape through
the box to the aforementioned trio of guitar amps. I have been recording guitars
direct and sending them back out to the amp for 35 years. The trick is to
match the impedance and the level so the guitar amp thinks it is seeing a
guitar… what a concept. I built a box that I still have kicking around
somewhere, but now I found the perfect way to replace it.
I am not done with Little Labs yet. They also had a digital audio router that
worked like a video selector switch. You can have four output devices and
select among any one of the five inputs. The digital signals are buffered
and regenerated for each output so there is no loading down of the signal
when one source is sent to multiple outputs. Both boxes cost about the same
as the new shoes my wife just bought.
Panasonic
Panasonic is re-structuring the way the pro audio division works. They have
dumped all of the consumer grade products and are focusing on high-end audio.
The first product to hit the streets will be an eight channel mic pre with
24 bit 96kHz A/D conversion. They have spent lots of money and lots of man-hours
to come up with a top-notch product. It looks good on paper, and I will let
you know as soon as I hear it in a studio environment.
The new software for the Panasonic DA-7 digital console was drawing a crowd.
The latest software revision includes a HUI emulation mode. This will allow
control of Pro Tools faders as a page on the DA-7. Lots of guys are buying
consoles for fader automation and hard-wired EQ and compression to free up
Pro Tools for the esoteric plug-ins. I work this way a lot.
Sony
Ok, see what happens when you spend a little more for a console? The Sony
DMX-R100 was pushing the envelope for small format digital consoles. The two
biggest features are 1024 step faders, and the color touch screen. For surround
panning, you just touch the picture of a room wherever you want the sound
placed. I have only one problem with the color touch screen. If anyone put
their grimy hands on mine I would break their hand!
The faders are the best part. The Sony DMX-R100 is the only small format console
with actual touch sensitive faders. All of the other consoles use a method
whereby a movement of the fader from where the computer has placed it is considered
a “touch”. If there is a vocal ride coming up that you want to erase,
all you do is touch the fader. The fader stays right where it is, and the
computer re-writes the fader data until you release the fader. This is the
way that large format consoles work. Of course, the automation for large format
consoles costs about $1,000 per fader plus $70,000 for the computer.
The 1024 step part is good too. The large format consoles use this step size.
I think the Oxford uses 2048 steps. This allows you to make very small 0.1dB
changes in the sweet spot, and gives you a finer resolution when the fader
is down at –20 or –40dB. You can hear a 0.1dB difference easily
when comparing the level of two sounds. 0.1dB fader trims are common in large
format studios.
High End Reverbs
The race is on for the next level of reverb processing. Lexicon was showing
the new 960 reverb processor. It has as much power in the basic model as four
480 XL reverbs. You can actually split it up that way if you want so you don’t
have to rent more 480s.
tcElectronic has been shipping the System6000 for about six months now. tc
claims that their new algorithms are so powerful that they need to be processed
on two DSP chips in parallel. The sound spaces sound pretty good, so maybe
they are on to something.
Yamaha has been in the reverb business for more than a decade, and they are
not about to be left out of the race. Sony was displaying their top end DRE-S777
reverb as well. The Sony can sample a space and build up a reverb model to
match.
Best of Show
Off to the side of the show floor was a booth with one guy and a computer.
The company was Webber Tapes Ltd. from the UK. The name of the product was
“Audio Compare”. I grabbed a poop sheet and moved on. At lunch I
read the overview of Audio Compare. My mouth fell open and part of my AES
Burger escaped. This guy has built an analyzer that can tell the difference
between two different audio sources. The system uses sophisticated ear modeling
techniques to show on paper what some of us have been hearing when we listen
to audio gear. “Why do these sound different when they measure exactly
the same?” Now we may be able to figure it out.
The box consists of two separate 700mHz Pentium based processors each looking
at one of the audio sources. The audio can be a digital file or it can be
digitized at whatever sample rate you desire. The software then tells you
what the difference is between the two audio streams. They had a copy of the
good and bad Steely Dan pressing that they were using as a test.
This is not for the squeamish. The box starts at $50,000 plus options. Warner
Brothers and MCA were looking at it for CD plant checking. I hope every CD
plant gets one so I never have to go through the same thing I did a few months
ago with the Steely Dan pressing problems. Webber is sending me a complete
analysis of the Steely CDs and when I know exactly what caused the problem,
you will be the first to know. Wait, I guess I will be the first to know,
but you will be second. No, I will probably tell Donald and Walter, Warner
Bros., a friend who works at Fox in LA. Ok, you will be nearer the last to
know, but at least I will tell you!So What
You know what I noticed most about the entire AES show? There was plenty of
opportunity to spend money. However much money you have in the bank, there
was the perfect item that cost exactly that much. A couple of years ago at
the AES in San Francisco I was in the Sony Oxford demonstration area. When
the salesman told me that the console was around $900,000 I said, “I
will wait for the $20,000 version.” This year that same salesman came
up to me and said, “Well, here is your $20,000 version of the Oxford”
pointing at the DMX-R100. I had no choice.