May 1, 2011 Mix Issue Table of Contents
Features
Essay: Cloud Collaboration
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Blair Jackson
It’s more than just a buzzword. Use of what is colloquially known as “the cloud” as a resource in producing audio seems to increase as its economic and practical benefits become more obvious to engineers, producers and musicians. It’s changing how people share information and collaborate on projects large and small, and we’re just beginning to realize the enormous potential of what really is a new way of working. …
Get It Live Over the Web
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Sarah Benzuly
True, many mid-level bands find themselves on 200-plus-dates-a-year tours, finding that ticket sales and merch provide the majority of their income. But with ever-increasing ticket prices—not to mention the soaring cost of fuel—is this traditional touring model really able to keep the cash flow coming in? Factor in that an artist just can’t hit all of the spots across the map on their tour; it’s just not feasible. So why not tackle both issues with one fell swoop—stream your concert, online, in high-resolution audio and video to a much larger, global audience. …
Cloud Computing | Mastering
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Barbara Schultz
Mastering is possibly the most solitary job in the music-production chain. An engineer with a pair of golden ears and a collection of singular equipment works alone in a pristine room, turning mixes of all sorts into dynamic, polished records. However, mastering pros, like recording engineers and mixers, are in a service business; pleasing clients remains their ultimate goal, and collaboration is a crucial part of their process. …
Cloud File Exchange | Share and Share Alike
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Mike Levine
Ever since broadband made it possible to send audio files at a reasonable speed over the Internet, musicians, engineers and producers have taken advantage of this capability to adopt decentralized workflows. In the early days of remote sessions, files were often exchanged by dropping them into Apple iChat or AOL Instant Messenger on the home end, or using satellite or T1-based services like EDNet on the ultra-high end. But in the past few years, the increased data transfer and storage capabilities that have allowed for the development of cloud computing have spawned a bevy of remote file-sharing services that make sending session files or stems to a collaborator across the country or the world almost as easy as “sneaker-net” to the engineer in the next studio. …
Music In the Cloud
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, Compiled by Sarah Benzuly
Amazon’s new Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Cloud Player for Web and Amazon Cloud Player for Android allow music lovers to store more in “the cloud” and play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC. Users upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their drive for free. …
Product Reviews
Solid State Logic Nucleus Review
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Brandon Hickey
Solid State Logic has a stellar reputation as a manufacturer of some of the recording industry’s most popular large-format mixing consoles, but in recent years, the company has offered products targeted toward personal studios. With its first few releases in this regard, SSL seemed to struggle to find a way to offer an SSL analog signal path with DAW-centric controls while keeping the price tag appropriate to the target market. …
Universal Audio 4-710d Preamp/DIs Review
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Kevin Becka
I first had the opportunity to review Universal Audio’s 710 Twin-Finity in the summer of 2009. I found it to be a versatile, affordable and innovative take on the tube vs. solid-state preamp. The only complaint I had at the time was that it didn’t come in stereo….
Waves Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter Review
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Michael Cooper
Originally introduced in the mid-’70s, the Model 402 Aphex Aural Exciter was an instant hit—but you couldn’t buy one. The few units that were built could only be rented at considerable expense. The seminal tube-powered processor, which added musically related harmonics to audio signals, was used on select studio sessions for such icons as Paul McCartney, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt….
Dave Hill Designs RA Plug-In Review
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Barry Rudolph
RA is a TDM (only) plug-in from Crane Song’s Dave Hill that allows for the manipulation of the ideal linear-transfer function of a virtual amplifier. Running in Mac (and coming to PC soon) Pro Tools hosts only, RA provides four different sections to precisely add generated even and odd harmonics and other distortion artifacts typically brought on by an amplifier overdriven into nonlinear operation. …
Music
Music: Madeleine Peyroux
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Blair Jackson
She will never completely escape the Billie Holiday comparisons. She will still have her albums categorized as “jazz” despite a multitude of compelling evidence to the contrary. Madeleine Peyroux’s large and devoted fan base doesn’t see stylistic limitations, but rather appreciates the tremendous breadth of her repertoire, which seamlessly incorporates pop standards, deep blues, country, folk, French classics, distinctive and imaginative takes on songs by some of the great writers of the modern era, and, increasingly in the past few years, her own songs, which span many of those genres. …
Classic Tracks: The Spinners “Mighty Love”
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Blair Jackson
Philadelphia was certainly hoppin’ in the early ’70s, thanks in large part to the music scene that revolved around owner/engineer Joe Tarsia’s Sigma Sound Studios. Tarsia’s roots actually go back to the Philly teen-pop of late-’50s/early ’60s acts like Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker, but by the time he opened Sigma on North 12th Street in August 1968, there was an exciting new brand of Philadelphia soul music taking root: The songwriting/production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, as well as producer/arranger Thom Bell, started churning out an incredible parade of hits, most of them recorded at Sigma by Tarsia. Acts associated with those producers—such as Jerry Butler, Wilson Pickett, The Delfonics, The Stylistics, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and The O’Jays—made Sigma one of the top recording studios in the country and helped Philadelphia surpass Detroit (still reeling from the relocation of Motown to L.A. in the early ’70s) as the nation’s soul music headquarters. …
Craig Marks Scores ‘Iron Chef America,’ ‘Next Iron Chef’
May 1, 2011 2:55 PM, By Matt Gallagher
The Food Network’s Iron Chef America and Next Iron Chef have successfully repackaged Japan’s cult-classic cooking-competition series for North American audiences, offering pressure-filled, suspenseful hourlong cook-offs between the Iron Chefs of America and world-class challengers on the battleground of Kitchen Stadium. Throughout these series’ runs (nine seasons and three seasons, respectively), Los Angeles–based composer Craig Marks has scored each culinary showdown. He describes his signature musical cues as “a magic recipe of samples and live instruments.” …
Music: Yes Master Rises Above
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Sarah Benzuly
After 10 months, Nashville’s Yes Master Studios is up and running. In the aftermath of the devastating flood that deluged most of Nashville last May, the studio had to be de-molded; carpet, drywall and insulation removed; and the stud walls sprayed down with anti-mold solution so that studio owner Jim DeMain could bring the room back to spec. Part of the restoration included rebuilding the mastering suite’s floating floor and sub enclosures, replacing the drywall iso layers and more. …
Live
Lady Gaga Tour Profile
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Sarah Benzuly
Lady Gaga is an experience. The performer. The artist. The musician. The fashion icon. The brand. And when “Mama Monster” hits the stage, all her little monsters in the Oakland Arena (Oakland, Calif.) eagerly pumped their paws to the sky in time with her chart-topping hits such as “Telephone,” “Paparazzi” and “Poker Face.” In part evoking a dance club atmosphere while quieting down for softer moments where she tickles the ivories for “You and I,” the Lady Gaga Monster tour is part visual spectacle—replete with numerous costume changes, each more interesting than the previous—and part true musicianship of Gaga and her 12-piece band. …
All Access: DEVO
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, Photos and Text By Steve Jennings
After rescheduling some shows, DEVO is back on the road in support of their new album, Something for Everybody, the band’s first studio release in 20 years. Songs such as “Fresh” and “Please Baby Please” have all the hooks, rhythms and beats of past classic DEVO hits. The band’s performance at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater was energetic and tight, covering the band’s hits and favorites. …
FixIt: Thames Audio’s Pete Cox on Wireless Lord Mayor’s Show
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM
The system could be viewed as three separate areas. First, we needed a signal path from the floating stage to the control position onboard the HMS Wellington. From here, we needed to distribute the audio to the speaker pontoons, which were up to 400 meters away on the opposite side of the river. This meant that traditional cable runs were simply not an option….
Live: QSC Control of Stadium Audio
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Sarah Benzuly
Home of the NFL Detroit Lions, Ford Field recently installed a QSC Q-Sys integrated system platform (two Q-Sys Core 3000 main frames and 27 Q-Sys I/O frames) to replace the original system, which was a mixture of analog and networked digital audio using a variety of processors and technology. Durrell Sports Audio handled the system redesign, which occurred just three weeks prior to the 2010 National College Hockey League Playoffs. …
Local Crew: Sound Works Productions
May 11, 2011 3:32 PM, By Sarah Benzuly
A pair of young, daring entrepreneurs (Eric Lindholm, then 19, now 25; and Daniel Nickleski, then 17, now 23) found themselves vying for similar SR gigs. “Both of us had bands in which we ran and owned the P.A.,” Nickleski recalls. “At a young age, we both had a drive to work hard at doing what we love, but we quickly found out it is not easy to make it in the music industry….
Live: New York City Theater Goes 5.1
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Sarah Benzuly
Last year, The Victory Theater’s audio system (originally installed in 1995) began to show its age. The theater’s director of production, David Jensen, consulted with Anthony Nittoli (principal designer with Akustiks, LLC), who had supervised the ’95 install. Says Jensen, “Anthony maintained his consultant relationship with the theater over the years, and I was fortunate to ‘inherit’ him when I came onboard in 2001. In addition to performing annual systems service, he has also used the new Victory as a lab for systems testing. He knows this venue better than anyone.” …
Road-Worthy Gear: New Sound Reinforcement Products, May 2011
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM
Mix magazine new sound reinforcement products column in the May 2011 issue of Mix magazine live sound products section article…
Departments
Editor’s Note: Are You in the Cloud?
May 1, 2011 2:58 PM, By Tom Kenny, Editorial Director
You can’t avoid “The Cloud” these days. The phrase is everywhere, from billboards advertising online banking to Amazon’s recently announced and highly publicized music locker. It’s become one of those terms that is in danger of being genericized, like organic, and enters the vernacular with a meaning that strays from the reality. As Wikipedia makes clear, if you are using your local Outlook email, you’re not in the cloud; you’re sending email over the Internet. If you are accessing your Gmail or Yahoo account, you’re in the cloud. Or to paraphrase Larry Ellison of Oracle from a few years ago, the cloud is what they do, but they used to call it the Internet. Maybe they should just change some words in their ads. …
Get Those Files
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, Compiled by Sarah Benzuly
Telefunken Elektroakustic is now offering multitrack session files with numerous musical artists—each miked with a plethora of the company’s mics. Each file includes a description of the recording session, including photos of the microphone placement, and preamps used for each channel. All audio files are presented in WAV format and were recorded at 24-bit/44.1kHz. …
Preamps | Fabulous Front Ends
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By George Petersen
Assembling the perfect digital audio workstation system used to be a fairly complex procedure—especially if you wanted to choose gear from different manufacturers. Once you settled on your DAW/platform, you needed to select your preamps, find the right interface for your software, track down drivers and hope everything worked out. …
On the Cover: Manifold Recording
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM, By Tom Kenny
Projects like Manifold Recording don’t come around often in a studio designer’s life. A client with knowledge and passion for the way music works in a space and the way every bit of detail contributes to the whole. A proposal for a carbon-neutral, ground-up facility that starts with the sweet spot in the control room and the musician in the live room and develops from there. A request for drawings that include 24-foot ceilings and visual continuity from control room to music room to three iso booths and two sound locks, through windows onto the 16-acre property in the hills south of Chapel Hill, N.C. A budget that was comfortable—not unlimited, but better than most. It did, however, grow over five-and-a-half years while other projects started and finished. And studio designer Wes Lachot had no idea what he was getting into. …
Tech: New Products, May 2011
May 1, 2011 9:00 AM
Mix magazine May 2011 tools of the trade article features new pro audio products in May 2011 Mix magazine pro audio product section…
