The Magazine
March 2015
What you hear determines every decision you make in the studio, and in our March issue, RECORDING takes a look and listen at various aspects of the monitoring chain, whether we’re discussing headphones, speakers, or your listening room's acoustics.
The issue features a wide variety of listening and monitoring products: new monitors from Genelec, Sonodyne, and Amphion, monitor controllers from Antelope Audio and Crane Song, speaker isolators from IsoAcoustics, and unique products like a high-end DAC from Korg and Avantone's modern take on the famous Auratone check speaker. We also have in-depth reviews of Apogee's stunning new Ensemble Thunderbolt interface, a 500 Series format channel strip from Ingram Engineering, and more!
Learning how to hear what you need to hear in your studio isn't easy, but our contributors bring years of expertise to the table in helping you get started. In this issue, we'll bring you straightforward advice on the basic principles of acoustics from experts Bruce Black and James Lindenschmidt. We'll also present straight talk on effective headphone use, matching monitor speakers to your room, and much more.
There's also a fascinating round-table discussion on the tricky topic of clipping (in our world of the digital Loudness Wars, how much clipping is acceptable... if at all?), an in-depth treatment of how to read gain specs, plus our regular features, Readers' Tapes with Marty Peters, and more. All this makes the March issue a can't-miss experience. Hear it all -- and know what you’re hearing -- with RECORDING!
Pick it up now on the newsstand... and so you get your next issue early (and save on cost), why not hit the big red SUBSCRIBE NOW button on this page and have RECORDING delivered to your door each month?
Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt 2 Audio Interface
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt 2 Audio Interface |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
The addition of the blazing-fast Thunderbolt connection is only part of the new power this rackmount interface brings to the modern studio.
Santa Monica-based Apogee has been at the forefront of digital audio technology for ......Expand
The addition of the blazing-fast Thunderbolt connection is only part of the new power this rackmount interface brings to the modern studio.
Santa Monica-based Apogee has been at the forefront of digital audio technology for 30 years. Since the company's birth in 1985, it's gone from building custom filters for early digital tape machines to creating some of the world's first standalone A/D and D/A converters.
Originally Apogee gear came in the form of an expandable network of clocking devices, computer expansion cards, and separate multi-channel A/D and D/A boxes, all tied together by the company's Symphony system of PCI cards. That changed in 2006, when the company crammed much of said technology into a sleek silver single-rackspace FireWire audio interface, which it named the Ensemble. At the time, this was one of the first standalone high-end multichannel FireWire interfaces; it featured four mic preamps, 8 channels total of analog I/O, and slick routing features, all with Apogee's famed sound quality.
Since then, the company's interface family has grown considerably. High-quality USB interfaces for portable use now include the One, Duet for iPad and Mac, and Quartet (reviewed June and December 2013), and Apogee's top end is covered by the enormously powerful Symphony I/O system (October 2013). Now it's time for the interface in the middle of the range, the one that started it all, to be reborn. The new Ensemble may be Apogee's most jam-packed full-service audio interface yet...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Amphion One18 Passive Monitors and Amp100 Power Amp
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Amphion One18 Passive Monitors and Amp100 Power Amp |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
A new name in pro audio speakers from Finland offers stunning sound.
Amphion is a speaker manufacturer based in Finland. The firm has been crafting home hi-fi speakers of all shapes and sizes since its start in 1998.......Expand
A new name in pro audio speakers from Finland offers stunning sound.
Amphion is a speaker manufacturer based in Finland. The firm has been crafting home hi-fi speakers of all shapes and sizes since its start in 1998. Recently the company has moved into the realm of professional studio monitors, and has just started US distribution. To say that these speakers have made a rapid and indelible impression on many of the popular gear forums with a broad range of engineers would be a colossal understatement. Seeing as this is our issue dedicated to monitors and monitoring, I knew we had to wrangle a set to try.
Currently the Amphion pro audio lineup includes 5 models: The One12, One15, One18, Two15, and Two18. The models with the One designation feature a 4.5", 5.25", or 6.5" aluminum coned low frequency driver respectively. Those with the prefix Two have a pair of 5.25" or 6.5" woofers per speaker. Regardless of size, each model uses the same 1" Titanium tweeter and shares the same basic look and internal design. For this review, I was provided with a pair of the One18 monitors....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Genelec 8010A Active Monitors
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Genelec 8010A Active Monitors |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
These tiny speakers are a revelation in larger-than-life sound.
For 35 years, the Finnish firm Genelec has been supplying studios with a wide range of monitor speakers and subwoofers that have become a famed signatur......Expand
These tiny speakers are a revelation in larger-than-life sound.
For 35 years, the Finnish firm Genelec has been supplying studios with a wide range of monitor speakers and subwoofers that have become a famed signature sound in rooms all over the world. Most recently, we reviewed the M030 and M040 monitors intended for small- to medium-sized home and project studios (March and June 2014).
This month we're reviewing the 8010A active monitor, the newest member of Genelec's 8000 range of active professional monitors. I lived with a pair for a few weeks, and found them a revelation from the moment I took them out of their boxes....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Antelope Audio Satori High-End Monitoring Controller
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Antelope Audio Satori High-End Monitoring Controller |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
An uncompromising controller that combines massive flexibility and digital control with an all-analog signal path, a summing mixer, and exquisite audio quality.
Antelope Audio has expanded from its origins as a build......Expand
An uncompromising controller that combines massive flexibility and digital control with an all-analog signal path, a summing mixer, and exquisite audio quality.
Antelope Audio has expanded from its origins as a builder of exacting studio clocking devices into the realm of audio routing and interfacing. We have recently reviewed the Orion32 rackmount audio interface (February 2014) and the portable Zen Studio (October 2014). Both interfaces represented an exceptional level of features per dollar, with flexibility and sound quality galore.
In this interview, we take a look and listen to the new Satori, a monitor controller with some wonderful extras added to the package. "Satori" is a Japanese term meaning "enlightenment" or "seeing truth" -- not a bad sentiment if you’re talking about a device to help you hear the truth in your monitoring situation!...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Ingram Engineering MPA575
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Ingram Engineering MPA575 |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
This 500 Series module packs an entire channel strip -- preamp, EQ, and dynamics -- into a tiny, easy-to-use package.
Back in June 2013, Scott Dorsey took a look at a new microphone preamp by Ingram Engineering. The MPA685 w......Expand
This 500 Series module packs an entire channel strip -- preamp, EQ, and dynamics -- into a tiny, easy-to-use package.
Back in June 2013, Scott Dorsey took a look at a new microphone preamp by Ingram Engineering. The MPA685 was/is a 2-channel mic pre with variable mic impedance, DI inputs and a high pass filter. Designed for cleanliness and accuracy, it also featured transformer coupling which helped add just the slightest hint of coloration.
Mr. Dorsey was impressed, concluding his review with: "This is the kind of preamplifier I want to see more of in our world. It does what it's supposed to do and it doesn't add much else to the sound. It has a lot of Swiss Army knife style features that can be very handy in a modern studio. And it's built with care and to last several lifetimes." That's high praise from Scott.
With that in mind, I was quite excited to take Eric Ingram's latest creation, the new MPA575, out for a spin. It's a channel strip with an MPA685 based mic preamp, a compressor, and an EQ... all in a single-space 500 Series module.
Looking at all the 500 Series boxes on the market, it's surprising how few full channel strips there are. I would imagine this is because of the difficulty of providing all the necessary controls on the front and cramming in all of the needed circuitry -- a tall order even for a double-wide module, let alone a single-space box! Ingram has done exactly that, however... and included some additional bells and whistles to boot....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Sonodyne SRP 400 Active Monitors
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Sonodyne SRP 400 Active Monitors |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
The latest monitors from India's respected speaker maker bring clarity, honesty, and transparency to any listening setup.
Sonodyne is an audio company based in India with a 40-year history in the business, one that's......Expand
The latest monitors from India's respected speaker maker bring clarity, honesty, and transparency to any listening setup.
Sonodyne is an audio company based in India with a 40-year history in the business, one that's just beginning to attract serious attention here in the USA. The designers and engineers at Sonodyne do everything in house from initial concepts to industrial design, prototyping, sourcing and manufacturing.
Sonodyne's full line includes products for the home hi-fi market, commercial installs, and the pro audio industry. Its pro monitor lines are the SM Series and the SRP Series (plus the SLF subwoofers). The SM Series is the upper line with six models, while the more budget-oriented SRP Series currently has 4 models to choose from. In a review in our February 2013 issue, Lorenz Ryncher found the SM200Ak to be "powerful, balanced, and honest to the ears."
This month we take our first look at the SRP line with the SRP 400. The SRP line, aside from the very smallest SRP 300, has quite similar design and build; models are available with 3.5", 4.5", 5", 6", and 8" woofers. With its 4.5" woofer, the SRP 400 is one of the “babies" of the SRP Series, intended for small and intimate listening spaces....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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iOS Music Tools: Positive Grid Final Touch
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
iOS Music Tools: Positive Grid Final Touch |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
This modular mastering processor suite provides everything from 8-band EQ and dynamics control to stereo imaging tools and reverb.
One hesitates to use the words "mastering" and "iPad" in the same sentence, but with ......Expand
This modular mastering processor suite provides everything from 8-band EQ and dynamics control to stereo imaging tools and reverb.
One hesitates to use the words "mastering" and "iPad" in the same sentence, but with the latest crop of high-speed processors in the newest models, many things are becoming easy on the iOS platform that simply weren't feasible in recent years. We now have apps for full-on tracking, mixing, virtual instrument composition, rhythm track generation, and signal processing, and many ways in which these apps can pass audio to one another, including AudioBus (reviewed July 2013, now in version 2) and Apple's own Inter-App Audio (IAA) standard. So why not mastering, too?
There are two ways we can look at mastering. One is to see mastering as a third-party process best performed in a high-end studio with lots of ultra-clean gear, by someone whose career is built on bringing a fresh set of ears and a well-developed skill set to each music project. According to that philosophy, it's advisable to take your mixes to a mastering studio regardless of your own gear.
The other way to look at mastering is simply as the last set of processes executed on a mix before it's done: adjusting its dynamics, perhaps gently shaping its tone to fit in better with other mixes on the same project, and other, more arcane tricks like stereo image processing. It may be best done by a third party in a dedicated studio, but we all know there will be times when it's more efficient and cost-effective to treat a particular track on our own, just to get it out the door... to give it, if you will, a final touch...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Once Over -- Reviews In Brief
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr. and Martin Nessi
Once Over -- Reviews In Brief |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr. and Martin Nessi
Avantone Pro Active MixCubes; Crane Song Avocet II Discrete Class A Studio Controller; IsoAcoustics Aperta Speaker Isolation Stands.
Since this is our issue dedicated to all things monitoring, I want to talk about a speaker ......Expand
Avantone Pro Active MixCubes; Crane Song Avocet II Discrete Class A Studio Controller; IsoAcoustics Aperta Speaker Isolation Stands.
Since this is our issue dedicated to all things monitoring, I want to talk about a speaker that anyone who's serious about mixing may want to consider adding to his or her monitor selection at some point. This is a box is that is squonky, blunt, forward... and yet, as history has proven, can be quite handy in helping to nail down a mix and getting it to translate to the real world.
If you look at pictures of many pro, project, and even mastering studios, you will often see one or two small single-driver cubelike speakers somewhere on the desk or meter bridge. If you see a speaker that looks like a cheap paper cone stuffed inside dated wood paneled sides, you're looking at the original Auratone 5C (often called Horror-tones!) from the 1970s and 1980s. It's now discontinued and the company long since defunct.
On the other hand, if you see a version with a high-gloss enamel-looking finish and a shiny chrome ring around a black speaker cone, that's the new version created by Avant Electronics a few years back, the speaker I'm reviewing today....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Basic Acoustics: Five Big Problems, Four Excellent Tools
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Written by
Bruce Black
Basic Acoustics: Five Big Problems, Four Excellent Tools |
Written by
Bruce Black
Learning room acoustics doesn't have to be scary. Here's a playbook of the five offenders most likely to hurt your sound, and the four weapons at hand to defeat them.
Trying to figure out what room acoustics is all about, de......Expand
Learning room acoustics doesn't have to be scary. Here's a playbook of the five offenders most likely to hurt your sound, and the four weapons at hand to defeat them.
Trying to figure out what room acoustics is all about, determining what truly good practices are, and making sense of all the information flying around out in the world, is a daunting quest. Many have tried, and many have died...
Well, not really, but it's still a difficult task, and finding good, reliable information on room acoustics can be an overwhelming challenge. There is a breathtaking amount of poor or downright false information floating around, much of it from sources you would expect to know better. And there's a charlatan lurking behind every corner.
This article will clear a lot of it up for you. Quick hint: it's not dark arts, magical alchemy, or abusive and debasing rituals meted out by mythical beings with really bad tempers. It's just physics....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Creating Space
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Written by
James Lindenschmidt
Creating Space |
Written by
James Lindenschmidt
Learn what goes into a great-sounding room, and how to get there on a budget.
One of the hallmarks of a superior recording is mastery of the sense of audible space. There are certainly a variety of techniques a recordist can......Expand
Learn what goes into a great-sounding room, and how to get there on a budget.
One of the hallmarks of a superior recording is mastery of the sense of audible space. There are certainly a variety of techniques a recordist can use to achieve space, and the particular techniques each engineer chooses to use will largely shape his or her style as it develops.
One of the best ways is to take advantage of the space in the room where the tracking takes place. Capturing a sense of space can be done through a combination of instrument placement, microphone technique, and an understanding of the room acoustics at play in the room. This can give the recordist a bulletproof formula to record tracks where the sense of space can be precisely manipulated during the mix, to achieve exactly the right amount of space and ambience, with or without external effects. This article will discuss a few strategies to accomplish exactly that.
Of course, the ideal scenario for capturing space in recordings is to record great musicians playing great instruments in a great-sounding room! Recording under these conditions almost feels like cheating, in the sense that the recordist has fewer challenges to overcome under these ideal circumstances. It becomes a simple matter of setting up the mics, getting levels, and capturing the players doing their thing.
But what are some characteristics of a great-sounding room? We first have to understand a few of the technical details of great acoustics, so that if they are not present, we will have some idea of how to overcome these limitations....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Getting A Great Headphone Monitor Mix
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Written by
Greg Ogan
Getting A Great Headphone Monitor Mix |
Written by
Greg Ogan
An artist's performance in the studio is only as good as their inspiration. As an engineer, it's your job to provide it.
Getting a good monitor mix for a recording artist is one of the most important stages of the recording ......Expand
An artist's performance in the studio is only as good as their inspiration. As an engineer, it's your job to provide it.
Getting a good monitor mix for a recording artist is one of the most important stages of the recording process. I've always found that if the music sounds amazing in the headphones while recording the artist will more likely to get into the vibe of the song and perform better. This is contrary to the practice of some engineers that I've seen. They send dry, loud tracks to whoever is recording, so that everyone can accurately judge what is going on with the signal.
Simply put, if the music sounds good in the room, then I will simply send that out to the headphones and use that as a starting point for the headphone mix. I only have to tweak very little from there to make it comfortable for whomever is recording. Then there are some tricks I use to get certain performances out of people -- more on that later...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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First Steps. Part 3: Monitor Speakers In Your Room
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Written by
Paul J. Stamler
First Steps. Part 3: Monitor Speakers In Your Room |
Written by
Paul J. Stamler
Your room and monitors are an inseparable team. We expand on our discussion of room acoustics, and delve into understanding, choosing, and setting up monitors in our space.
I talked last month about the need for a neutral, u......Expand
Your room and monitors are an inseparable team. We expand on our discussion of room acoustics, and delve into understanding, choosing, and setting up monitors in our space.
I talked last month about the need for a neutral, uncolored monitor setup. What do I mean by that? A neutral setup, which includes both the monitors and the space, is one that doesn't impose its own personality on the audio which passes through it; one that doesn't unduly emphasize one part of the audio spectrum. A key part of that is getting the midrange right.
The midrange, loosely defined as the frequencies from about 300 Hz to 5000 Hz (5 kHz), is where the music's meat and potatoes live -- voices, and the fundamental notes of many instruments. To simplify, if a monitor doesn't get the midrange right, it stands no chance of presenting an honest picture for tracking and mixing....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Crosstalk: The Clipping Conundrum
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Written by
Paul J. Stamler, Giles Reaves, Mike Rivers, and Paul Vnuk Jr.
Crosstalk: The Clipping Conundrum |
Written by
Paul J. Stamler, Giles Reaves, Mike Rivers, and Paul Vnuk Jr.
A reader wonders if it's truly possible to avoid clipping while still having a good-sounding mix, and four of our contributors provide a wealth of answers.
Welcome to Crosstalk! This month's collection of wisdom was inspired......Expand
A reader wonders if it's truly possible to avoid clipping while still having a good-sounding mix, and four of our contributors provide a wealth of answers.
Welcome to Crosstalk! This month's collection of wisdom was inspired by an interesting letter from reader (and Readers' Tapes contributor) Steve Bonaccorsi:
Hello Mike: I wonder if you could address the issue of clipping in an upcoming magazine. I am currently using a Pro Tools PC-based system. From what I have read about digital recording, it seems that the direction is to always avoid clipping at all costs, yet I can't seem to avoid it completely.
I always do my best to make sure my inputs are adjusted so that clipping does not occur. However, as my tracks develop, I find that clipping sneaks back in. For instance, I'll do multiple tracks of vocals, each with no clipping. Then I'll attempt to route them to a single auxiliary track, in order to add equalization, etc., and... boom... clipping occurs on the combined track. At that point, I start lowering the fader on the aux track and, as a result, the vocals begin to lose their strength in the mix. I try to address it with a compressor, but I begin to notice that the quality of the vocals begins to get compromised. Frustrating.
Also, I routinely get clipping on certain components of drum tracks, e.g. snare drum cracks, kick drums, etc. In many cases, I'll have multiple tracks with no clipping and then when I go to the master track... clipping. Again, as I lower the master fader... the whole track loses loudness compared to professional CDs.
Do you have any suggestions or tips? Is "occasional" clipping okay (e.g. snare drum hits) or should it be 100% avoided? Is compression the typical answer? If I looked at a professional mixing job, would I see no clipping? I'd appreciate any insight you might be able to provide. I really enjoy Recording and hope you can address this issue sometime in the future. Is it just me? Thanks -- Steve Bonaccorsi
Several authors answered Steve; I found it fascinating to see where they agreed and where they differed, and where each writer chose to look at the problem of clipping, from the inputs to the mix bus. Some of these answers are relevant to Steve's case directly, others are more generally useful; if you've been having issues with clipping and loudness, you're bound to find something worthwhile here....
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Listening Levels: Set And Forget!
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Written by
Mike Metlay
Listening Levels: Set And Forget! |
Written by
Mike Metlay
The biology of your ears and brain can mess with the accuracy of your monitoring. Here's how to minimize the effect and get the most accurate results.
I'd like to close out this issue's focus on monitoring and acoustics with......Expand
The biology of your ears and brain can mess with the accuracy of your monitoring. Here's how to minimize the effect and get the most accurate results.
I'd like to close out this issue's focus on monitoring and acoustics with a short article devoted to a very simple idea that the majority of you will really hate, but which is a fundamental keystone of accurate monitoring in a given room. I want to talk about the process of setting a listening level and leaving it alone... ideally forever.
First I'm going to explain the why of it all, the acoustical reasons why you mustn't get into the habit of working routinely at a wide variety of listening levels. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the how of it all -- how to set up your room and listening system so this principle will be in place whenever you need it (which is all the time). Some of these ideas have been discussed in other articles in recent months, but I'm going to pull them all together in one place and focus on them alone. Okay?...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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Specs: Removing The Mystery. Part 2: Gain
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Written by
Mike Rivers
Specs: Removing The Mystery. Part 2: Gain |
Written by
Mike Rivers
You'd think that a simple measurement of how much louder a piece of gear makes audio would be straightforward. Think again -- there's some complexity here, but when you master it, your recording quality will improve by leaps and bounds.
Expand
You'd think that a simple measurement of how much louder a piece of gear makes audio would be straightforward. Think again -- there's some complexity here, but when you master it, your recording quality will improve by leaps and bounds.
Gain is a regular part of our audio gear vocabulary—preamp gain, gain reduction, master gain, maximum gain, make-up gain, gain riding... the list goes on. Since gain is all about levels and usually involves decibels, learning about it will be a good followup to last month's article.
"Gain" is our jargon for amplification, a way of expressing the ratio of output to input level of a device. A mic preamp that gives you 5 volts out for an input of 5 millivolts has a gain of 5V / 0.005V = 1000. Saying that it has a gain of one thousand is perfectly legitimate, but since the decibel is a ratio, we often express gain in decibels...
Read more in the March issue of RECORDING!
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