Archives
August 2012
Summer is hotter than ever at RECORDING, and our August issue touches on a very hot subject: Plug-ins and support software for your DAW. We take a look at how you can extend the power and capability of your DAW in a variety of ways.
Not all content libraries are created equal. Many different manufacturers seek to control the quality of their content and how users access it by making it available through special player engines... in this issue we'll introduce the major players and lay out some of the differences between them.
If you're working with session musicians or trying to compose for a large group on your own, notation software is vital, and a lot of sweat and effort can be saved if you can hear what your compositions sound like before folks play them. In this issue, we walk through a composition using Avid Sibelius and its internal sounds, and touch on how one composer moves his work from Makemusic Finale to Steinberg Cubase.
And then there are plug-in reviews! There are new takes on beloved old classics, like Universal Audio's improved 1176 plug-in for the UAD-2 DSP card and Softube's emulations of hardware from Summit Audio, Tonelux, and Trident. And there are new ideas from the appealingly sensible (the united-we-stand ethos of the Plug-in Alliance) to the totally radical (the seemingly impossible UNVEIL from Zynaptiq... a plug-in that claims to remove reverb from recorded tracks!).
If you're looking beyond plug-ins and software, we've a lot to offer in this issue for you too. AEA's newest preamp is taken for a test run, along with a powerful audio interface from PreSonus, a fresh look at a beloved ribbon mic, and the promise of the Peavey MuseBox, which puts the world of plug-ins into the hands of musicians who don't trust computers on stage (or, maybe, anywhere else).
Bruce Kaphan gives us a peek into his latest recording project, Recording Fundamentals continues exploring music production and those involved in the process, Scott Dorsey gets serious about terminology, and much more. In or out of the box, there's something fun and enlightening to be had for just about everyone in the August RECORDING!
Reviewed and Revisited: Universal Audio 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-in Collection
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Reviewed and Revisited: Universal Audio 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-in Collection |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
The first and most popular UAD plug-in gets a major facelift -- in no less than three new formats.
Legendary engineer Bill Putnam Sr., founder of Urei and Universal Audio, created the 1176 back in the late '60s, and it becam......Expand
The first and most popular UAD plug-in gets a major facelift -- in no less than three new formats.
Legendary engineer Bill Putnam Sr., founder of Urei and Universal Audio, created the 1176 back in the late '60s, and it became pretty much the most famous, most ubiquitous compressor in history. It has been cloned, copied and reissued numerous times, in both the plug-in and hardware worlds, and when the UAD-1 card was first introduced over a decade ago by Universal Audio, the 1176 was one of the first pieces they modeled. I'm sure to be in good company when I say that the original UAD 1176LN is the most used plug-in I own.
That plug-in is still a successful recreation of its hardware sibling, but the science of component modeling has improved tenfold in the last five years, as UA has proven with its latest tape emulations, equalizers and reverbs. Less than a month ago, UA released a brand new "from-scratch" collection of three famous 1176 variants, now known as the 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-In Collection...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
This USB audio interface leverages the power of the StudioLive digital consoles' effects to make your tracks sound great.
PreSonus has provided a variety of interesting innovations in computer audio over the past several yea......Expand
This USB audio interface leverages the power of the StudioLive digital consoles' effects to make your tracks sound great.
PreSonus has provided a variety of interesting innovations in computer audio over the past several years. The Inspire 1394 was the first FireWire audio interface that could be seamlessly networked to provide more ins and outs, a technology we now often take for granted; the StudioLive digital consoles (reviewed January 2011 and November 2011) provided a great platform for music recording and live band support, complete with wireless remote control from iOS devices; the Capture software allowed for quick and easy recording of multitrack audio in a live situation; and Studio One has come out of nowhere to become a serious DAW contender that plays well with pretty much all the hardware out there but offers special streamlining for users of PreSonus interfaces.
Now a lot of these technologies are finding their way into new forms. The AudioBox VSL Series is a set of three 24-bit/96 kHz USB audio interfaces that combine great-sounding hardware with a good chunk of the software integration that makes the PreSonus range so special...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Peavey MuseBox
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Peavey MuseBox |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
This portable, convenient DSP engine offers a palette of great plug-ins with easy use and reliability that give conventional computer setups a run for their money.
Peavey's new MuseBox, developed in partnership with Muse Res......Expand
This portable, convenient DSP engine offers a palette of great plug-ins with easy use and reliability that give conventional computer setups a run for their money.
Peavey's new MuseBox, developed in partnership with Muse Research, is a portable and compact signal processor that's designed to fill a lot of roles in a recording musician's studio or stage rig. It can be any one of a number of virtual instruments, or a powerful effects processor, or both at once, with a built-in mixing architecture, MIDI control, and flexible editing. There's a lot going on inside the MuseBox, and discovering all it can do has been a fun and rewarding experience...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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AEA RPQ500
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
AEA RPQ500 |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
A new 500-Series preamp offers clean gain that's good for more than just ribbon mics. Also: Revisiting AEA's now-classic R84 ribbon.
Wes Dooley's Audio Engineering Associates (AEA) is known for its line of high-end ribbon mi......Expand
A new 500-Series preamp offers clean gain that's good for more than just ribbon mics. Also: Revisiting AEA's now-classic R84 ribbon.
Wes Dooley's Audio Engineering Associates (AEA) is known for its line of high-end ribbon microphones as well as being one of the world's foremost restoration specialists of vintage RCA ribbon models. AEA also manufactures a line of high-end microphone preamps that, as you can guess, are designed to literally get the most out of your ribbon microphones.
Today we are looking at AEA's newest mic pre model, the RPQ 500, which is a few evolutionary steps up from AEA's TRP (short for The Ribbon Pre) released in 2006. Reviewer Scott Dorsey gave us the lowdown on the TRP in our March issue of that year and commented on the clarity it brought out in a ribbon microphone.
Two years after its release came the RPQ, and while its raison d'être was still primarily the world of ribbon microphones, there were other improvements as well that went beyond ribbons: optional phantom power, a sweepable high-band eq called the Curve Shaper, and a variable low-frequency filter.
The newest member of the AEA family, the RPQ 500, is a single channel from the 2-channel RPQ, designed for use in an API 500-Series style enclosure (For this review, I used the Radial Workhorse enclosure, reviewed in our October 2011 issue). All of the RPQ's features are included as well as a new variation or two...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Plug-in Outlet: Softube's Newest Emulations
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Plug-in Outlet: Softube's Newest Emulations |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Software versions of the famous Trident A-Range EQ, Tonelux Tilt EQ and Summit TLA-100A Compressor.
This trio of plug-ins from Swedish software maker Softube continues its tradition of spot-on recreations of both classic and......Expand
Software versions of the famous Trident A-Range EQ, Tonelux Tilt EQ and Summit TLA-100A Compressor.
This trio of plug-ins from Swedish software maker Softube continues its tradition of spot-on recreations of both classic and boutique hardware. On test this time: the Trident A-Range EQ, The Tonelux Tilt EQ and the Summit TLA-100A...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Plug-in Outlet: Zynaptiq UNVEIL
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Plug-in Outlet: Zynaptiq UNVEIL |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Does a plug-in that can actually remove reverb from audio seem like science fiction? Science, yes... but fiction -- not any more!
Every once in a while a music product comes along that simply claims to do the impossible. We ......Expand
Does a plug-in that can actually remove reverb from audio seem like science fiction? Science, yes... but fiction -- not any more!
Every once in a while a music product comes along that simply claims to do the impossible. We laugh about it and maybe share around audio files to show our friends how badly it fails, and then we forget about it... until a year (or two, or five, or ten) passes, and someone comes along and demonstrates that now it works. The impossible has become possible, and it's sort of embarrassing how quickly what was once heresy becomes trivia. Remember when pitch-correcting a note inside a chord was unheard-of?
This time around, the impossibility that has been quietly made possible is something that's been a Holy Grail of audio processing for nearly 50 years, something so much desired (and so poorly delivered) that Scott Dorsey devoted an entire Fade Out to it back in our October 2009 issue -- the removal of reverberation from recorded audio.
Zynaptiq is a small German plug-in company whose motto is "Science, Not Fiction". That was very much on my mind as I tested out its newest product, aptly named UNVEIL.
Zynaptiq calls UNVEIL a "De-Reverberation & Signal Focusing Processor", designed to remove (or at least lessen) reverb and "focus" signals for greater clarity and presence in the soundstage. It does this without gating, eq, or phase correlation analysis -- that means it works on any kind of program, from single instrument tracks in mono to full stereo and even surround mixes. You just slap it on a track, turn a few knobs, and your reverb goes away... Or does it? Let's dig deeper...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Plugin Alliance BIG 4 Bundle
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Plugin Alliance BIG 4 Bundle |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
This collection of compressor and eq plug-ins from elysia, Brainworx, SPL, and Vertigo Sound combines fantastic sound and features with a customer-friendly new approach to licensing.
The Big 4 Bundle is a suite of plug-ins f......Expand
This collection of compressor and eq plug-ins from elysia, Brainworx, SPL, and Vertigo Sound combines fantastic sound and features with a customer-friendly new approach to licensing.
The Big 4 Bundle is a suite of plug-ins from Brainworx, Vertigo, elysia and SPL, now members of a new organization called the Plugin Alliance.
The Big 4 Bundle shows an emphasis for both mastering and the 2-bus; it contains the elysia elpha Compressor, Brainworx bx_XL, SPL's Passeq and the Vertigo Sound VSC-2...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Sibelius 7 As A Tool For Sample Playback. Part 1: The Sibelius Sounds And Mixer
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Written by
Jerome Gilmer
Sibelius 7 As A Tool For Sample Playback. Part 1: The Sibelius Sounds And Mixer |
Written by
Jerome Gilmer
We continue our look at the integration between modern scoring software and powerful new sound libraries, this time examining the built-in sounds in Avid Sibelius.
These days the sound libraries in notation programs seem to ......Expand
We continue our look at the integration between modern scoring software and powerful new sound libraries, this time examining the built-in sounds in Avid Sibelius.
These days the sound libraries in notation programs seem to approach the level of some of our best sampler and virtual instrument libraries. In this issue we're taking a look at both the quality of the sounds and the mixing environment offered in latest version of Avid Sibelius.
I'm a long-time composer and producer, and like many of my peers I've always felt that the real juice needed for serious audio production required either great live players, or DAWs loaded with the best sample and synth libraries, or both. Clearly, the horsepower in notation software has always been routed to the notation engine, and the playback system has been somewhat of an afterthought -- good enough to proof your work or do a very rough demo, but not by any means good enough to be useful as finished work.
That line may be blurring now, just as another line blurred years ago when I finally had to admit that I could do a score faster with Sibelius than I could with a pencil. It was a paradigm shift for me, and no doubt there are many more ahead for all of us. Audio in notation programs seems to be finally coming of age...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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The Player's The Thing
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Written by
Mike Metlay
The Player's The Thing |
Written by
Mike Metlay
In a digital-music world where content is king, how you deliver your content is critical to success. Here's a quick look at how the landscape is changing.
In the world of plug-ins and virtual instruments, we are seeing a shi......Expand
In a digital-music world where content is king, how you deliver your content is critical to success. Here's a quick look at how the landscape is changing.
In the world of plug-ins and virtual instruments, we are seeing a shift of marketing focus, from the software that plays the content (the software sampler) to the content itself. This has become possible due to the proliferation of cheap or free sound playback software.
For familiarity's sake, early virtual instruments were modeled after traditional hardware-software synthesizers looked very much like hardware synthesizers, and software samplers looked and worked very much like hardware samplers.
So as software samplers evolved, there was a tendency to follow a "hardware sampler in software" approach to building sounds, and that in turn guided how sounds were made and marketed. Software samplers like Emagic (now Apple) EXS24, MOTU MachFive, IK Multimedia SampleTank, and perhaps most prominently Native Instruments Kontakt, were designed for end users to be able to build their own extremely detailed sound sets, with multiple articulations, velocity layering, keymapping, and so on.
As a result, people developing sound libraries found it easiest and most sensible to provide their sounds in formats that automatically worked within those samplers. Just as in the 1980s and 1990s you would hunt for sample libraries that worked in your E-Mu, Korg, Akai, or Roland sampler, in the early 2000s you would hunt for sample libraries that worked in Kontakt, EXS24, etc.
As time went on, makers of sound libraries realized that relying on a very powerful software sampler to play back their content had its down side. Full-on software samplers are expensive, complex beasts; they offer huge numbers of features that the vast majority of users never want to go near, much less mess around with. Yikes! What's a fellow to do when all he wants to do is play piano on his computer, huh?...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Computer Composition -- A Workflow Report
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Written by
Gary Eskow
Computer Composition -- A Workflow Report |
Written by
Gary Eskow
A well-respected composer talks about how his projects move from score paper to scoring software to DAW for great results.
Several years ago the equipment required to pull off convincing orchestral mock-ups carried a price tag that ......Expand
A well-respected composer talks about how his projects move from score paper to scoring software to DAW for great results.
Several years ago the equipment required to pull off convincing orchestral mock-ups carried a price tag that placed this work almost exclusively in the hands of professional composers who used it to make a profit... and I'm not even going back to the late '80s when you had to throw down $100k for a Synclavier or Fairlight to get the job done.
My, how things have changed since those days, and even the first decade of this century. No longer are you required to house a half dozen computers, multiple digital audio and MIDI interfaces, monitors, and keyboards. A fast Mac or PC outfitted with 8 or 16 Gigabytes of RAM yields all the horsepower you need to create beautiful-sounding orchestral tracks.
I just finished recording the third movement of my orchestral piece "4,3,2,1," and Recording's Editor asked me to outline the process I went through to create the stereo master. Over the years I've had the good fortune to speak with some of the best orchestral mock-up arrangers in the film and television business. They've been kind enough to share their tricks with me, and it's a pleasure for me to discuss my work method with you readers...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Recording Fundamentals. Chapter 8: The Music Production Process -- Who Does What?
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Written by
Eric Ferguson
Recording Fundamentals. Chapter 8: The Music Production Process -- Who Does What? |
Written by
Eric Ferguson
From songwriter to mastering engineer, many roles are being played in the completion of a record, and traditional job descriptions have given way to new ones. You may wear more than one hat in this process, but how are these hats defined?
<......Expand
From songwriter to mastering engineer, many roles are being played in the completion of a record, and traditional job descriptions have given way to new ones. You may wear more than one hat in this process, but how are these hats defined?
Last month we discussed the steps involved in the music production process, with special attention paid to how the process varies among dissimilar music styles. As an example, Hip-Hop typically involves a very different production method from that employed when recording rock or other idioms. Diversity in approach translates to different project workflows, variations in studio requirements, and differences in the equipment necessary to make a record. Also significant are dissimilarities regarding job title and associated responsibilities. Multiple individuals are involved in modern music production, and who does what, and what they are called, varies with music style and budget.
Before I go on to describe some of the various occupations found in the recording business, I must state an obvious fact: many individuals in the biz work in multiple capacities. An obvious example of this is the fact that many readers of this magazine (including myself) write, perform, produce, engineer, mix, and master their own music. Whereas at one time professional music jobs were clearly defined, today's musicians, engineers, and producers must show great flexibility to succeed. Narrow job titles such as those that follow are stereotypical, and more than likely exist in hybrid forms in the real world...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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The Making of QUARTET
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Written by
Bruce Kaphan
The Making of QUARTET |
Written by
Bruce Kaphan
An accomplished engineer and producer sets aside time to actually do an album of his own music for once, and there are great lessons to be learned by following the production process.
I'm in my mid-fifties. It is said that i......Expand
An accomplished engineer and producer sets aside time to actually do an album of his own music for once, and there are great lessons to be learned by following the production process.
I'm in my mid-fifties. It is said that it's the painter's house that never gets a coat of paint... After years and years of hard work and, on balance, more good fortune than bad, I've made it a point that every so often I allow myself to make my own music, using the tools and skills I've amassed over the years.
If I had to use one word to describe making Bruce Kaphan Quartet (hereinafter "BKQ"), it would be "convergence". Looking back on how the album came together, it's amazing to me how many previously seemingly disconnected avenues in my life and work suddenly connected on this project...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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Fade Out
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Written by
Scott Dorsey
Fade Out |
Written by
Scott Dorsey
Misused Words.
When I was a kid in Hawaii, I learned video production from a fellow named Mr. Fordham, who was famous for yelling at people and throwing ashtrays at them when they used the word "filming" to mean "vid......Expand
Misused Words.
When I was a kid in Hawaii, I learned video production from a fellow named Mr. Fordham, who was famous for yelling at people and throwing ashtrays at them when they used the word "filming" to mean "videotaping" or talked about "microphone wires" when they meant "cables".
Now I'm as old as he was back then, and I'm developing the same sort of grouchy annoyances. I feel like I'm sitting on my porch waving my cane at all those annoying kids who cannot learn to speak properly, but I'm not sure that's really a bad place to be.
Here are a few of the word usages that annoy me...
Read more in the August 2012 issue of RECORDING!
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