Jan 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Gary Eskow

When the stock market took a nosedive back in the late '80s, the advertising industry felt the shock. Big-ticket clients suddenly drew in the purse strings, and agencies scurried around trying to find ways to cut costs.

This was just about the time that MIDI was coming into full stride, and project studios began cherry-picking jobs that had previously been the exclusive domain of the larger music houses. Eventually, many of these smaller studios added workstations, sync boxes, video decks and the like, allowing them to offer audio post, sound design and original music services on a one-stop-shopping basis.

In response, some of the larger advertising agencies, which had historically staffed in-house music departments with music producers whose job was to get a spot into the hands of the right composer and oversee that part of the creative process, decided that bringing music production and sound design in house might result in additional savings. They also felt that giving copywriters and art directors access to music production personnel on a daily basis would help eliminate some of the last-minute, hit-and-miss guesswork that often accompanies the creation of a jingle or score-generally the last piece of the puzzle that gets worked on before broadcast. The big story used to be that video houses were adding audio rooms; now the agencies themselves are adding audio rooms.

DDB Needham Worldwide Communications Group Inc., a major Madison Avenue shop, now has its own variation on this theme. Cool Dry Place, a wholly owned subsidiary of DDB, was founded in 1996 in order to provide clients with high-quality broadcast post-production services under one roof, at reasonable rates.

DDB producers began turning inward in the early '90s for post-production on test spots-those commercials that are not intended to be broadcast. As the in-house team began compiling a reel of work, confidence escalated. "We were slowly purchasing more editing equipment, and producers saw that we had the same gear as outside facilities, and that we could contain costs, work on tight deadlines and deliver quality product," says CDP president Geoff Smith.

Chief audio engineer Barry Rose has been with DDB for ten years, and he cuts sound on an Avid AudioVision workstation. Dailies come into the shop on Beta SP, and Cool Dry Place editors execute a rough cut, which Rose begins working on. If the spot is for television (lots of major radio campaigns originate at DDB, including work for Anheuser-Busch), Rose will clean up or replace dialog, sweeten the tracks with effects, and at times add some sound design work.

"With recent upgrades, we now have access to Pro Tools, and one of our two audio rooms has a Yamaha 02R, which we really love," Rose says. "But the AudioVision is a remarkably easy environment to record into, and I can slip sounds around to picture with no problem." Little actual musical composition takes place in-house-DDB still hires outside houses for scoring and jingle work-but Rose will take snippets from CD libraries and create effects in AudioVision by combining tracks and layering them. Radio calls for even more inventiveness, according to Smith.

"When the visual element is not compelling-or nonexistent, such as in radio-sound design needs to bring a much more wide-open feel to the process, and Barry does a great job for our creatives and producers," Smith explains, recalling a Nutrageous spot that Rose worked on for DDB Needham client Hershey. "I used everything we had laying around here in that spot, including a bunch of stuff I pulled off of CDs," Rose interjects. "I think we used the Sound Ideas, Hollywood Edge and DigiFX libraries to help get across the writer's idea. The concept was that of an old radio drama, with cartoon-like sound effects used to describe what the writer was saying-very over-the-top ways of describing the sensation of eating the bar. We used pops, whistles, punches, garbles, explosions-you name it-all edited within the Avid."

One critical limitation of AudioVision, according to Rose, is that it cannot access the plug-ins that add so much functionality to Pro Tools. "At the present time, if you want to access effects-I'd make a lot of use of DINR, the Digidesign noise reduction plug-in, for example, as well as some effects and dynamics processing plug-ins-you have to export your session to Pro Tools. That seems like a needless extra step to me."

Although Avid acquired Digidesign in 1995, the two entities are still finding their way to full integration, says Smith. "It seems that Pro Tools and Avid have yet to integrate. All indicators are that they will be integrating the two products into single platform in 1999, and we're really looking forward to that day."

Which is not to say that AudioVision, as presently constituted, does not offer any DSP functionality. Rose says that its internal EQ is quite acceptable for broadcast work, "and I use the reverse clip, time compression/expansion, and pitch-change functions all the time. One of the things I really like about the equalization is that you can apply it per clip, without having to assign it to an entire track." AudioVision has 16 physical inputs and outputs, with a total of 24 virtual tracks within the machine. "I never run out of memory applying effects and EQ-we're running a Mac 9600 computer at 300 MHz, with 128 megs of RAM. All of our backups go to JAZ 1-gig disks," Rose says.

Although Rose is a fan of the 02R's automation package, AudioVision often allows him to bypass it, letting him utilize the console for its scene memory and as a digital router, taking signals by tielines from video decks, his workstation, and a variety of CD and DAT machines located throughout the facility. "Again, there's a lot you can do within AudioVision-automate clip levels, execute fades, and apply compression and EQ," he says. "It's not the same level of automation that you get with a digital board like the 02R, but you can squeeze a lot out of it."

DDB Needham is obviously the big-bear client for Cool Dry Place, but up to 40% of the facility's business comes from outside clients, including other agencies, corporate clients and a smattering of record labels. Smith clearly is interested in developing outside relationships, though the in-house spots continue to fuel equipment acquisition.

"Some of our recent projects include recording sessions for the Jerky Boys' new comedy CD, the 30-second TV spot 'Night School' for Frito-Lay, and we recently completed a project for DDB that involved over 300 separate radio spots for Radio Bermuda," Smith says. "This contract allowed us to move up the schedule on our second audio room, especially in terms of how quickly we were able to purchase new gear. We're looking to bring this room online in the first quarter of 1999."

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