Welcome the April 2015 edition of the
Small-studio Secrets News, keeping you up
to date with ongoing developments to my free online recording and mixing
resources at http://www.cambridge-mt.com/rs-intro.htm and
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-intro.htm.
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NEWS HEADLINES
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* Frankfurt Musikmesse: Below-the-radar Discoveries
* 3 new multitracks added to the 'Mixing Secrets' Free Multitrack Download
Library!
* SOS 'Mix Rescue' remix project for Bruks 'Kak Tvoi Dela, Vova?'
* Patrick Talbot 'Reason To Leave' On Crowd Audio
* The latest new Mix Review critiques
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SMALL-STUDIO GEAR TIPS FROM THE FRANKFURT MUSIKMESSE
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As you all know, I was at the Frankfurt
Musikmesse a couple of weeks ago. (Great
to meet up with so many of you there -- we should make it a tradition!) There
have been plenty of announcements of new
products from the big manufacturers, so
I won't bore anyone by regurgitating those.
Instead, let me offer my own little
round-up of useful and affordable new gizmos I encountered at the show that
still aren't on most small-studio engineer's radars yet -- but probably should
be!
* Axel Joost Electronik's XLR Generator & XLR Tester:
Anyone doing self-op small-studio location recordings (as I do the whole time)
will love these. The Generator (around £30) is
a phantom-powered barrel adaptor
with an LED indicator on it. You can plug into
the end of a mic line to diagnose
phantom-powering faults (including which XLR
pins are faulty), and it also sends
either pink noise or 100Hz tone down the line for line-checking purposes. The
slightly pricier Tester (around £100) can do
the same, but will also check XLR
cables for faults and flipped connections. Both are extremely compact, very
effectively designed, and already on my shopping list!
http://www.optogate.com/xlr_generator_uk.html
http://www.optogate.com/xlr_tester_uk.html
* Latch Lake's MicKing 1100 mic stand
Few mic-stand manufacturers have the reputation
for robustness and quality that
Latch Lake do. However, their quality also
costs, which is why you don't see too
many of their products in small studios. Well, that may be about to change,
because their latest stand (and their first with a more portable folding base)
looks like it'll be within the budget of project studios. And although it
initially looks not much larger than a common-or-garden stand, it appears to
have an upward reach in excess of 3m, and has a counter-weighting system that
seemed extremely solid to me when I manhandled it at the show.
http://latchlakemusic.com/stands/micking-1100-2/
* Popaudio's Pop Filter
It's not every day you can say you're genuinely impressed by a popshield!
Popaudio have questioned every aspect of the traditional gooseneck popshield's
design, and then designed an improved version, complete with custom-designed
clip mount, jointed positioning arm, and three different twist-lock heads:
traditional dual-layer fabric; metal (more robust, and dishwasher-safe); and
open-cell foam (the most acoustically transparent, though also the most
fragile). The Classic version (£40) comes with
just the fabric head, whereas the
Studio version (£55) comes with all three heads.
http://www.popaudio.co.uk
* Sound Radix's Drum Leveler, AutoAlign, Pi, and Surfer EQ
These plug-ins take a bit of getting your head
around, but they offer functions
that nothing else does, and their applications
for mixing appear to be enormous.
Locking all your loudest kick hits to a fixed
level looks like it's a cinch with
Drum Leveller, and without the side-effects of the compression-based
alternative. But that's only the start of it,
because that plugin also seems to
be able to do some crazy relevelling of mixed
drum parts. AutoAlign has a great
little frequency-dependent correlation meter, unlike any other phase-match
detection plug-in I've seen, and Pi's real-time
phase-manipulation engine is one
of a kind. And then there's SurferEQ, which
allows you to lock EQ frequencies to
the pitch of an instrument, and it's just been updated to include a
multi-peak/notch harmonic-series filter type, which could well be the perfect
solution for salvaging over-fuzzed bass and guitar lines.
http://www.soundradix.com
* Zynaptiq's Unveil, Unchirp, and Morph 2
Zynaptiq are one of a several software companies now doing freaky things with
audio that used to be considered impossible. Unveil's ability to reduce (or
indeed enhance) the reverb and/or ambient noise
within a mixed signal is pretty
astonishing, and has clear mixing applications. However, Unchirp (an algorithm
for patching up the sound of lossy audio file formats such as MP3) also caught
my eye because of its built-in multiband transient enhancement facility -- not
the headline feature, but again it seemed to
work so well I can imagine using it
for many mix-salvage jobs. And if you like vocoder-like sounds, but still want
to be able to hear the lyrics, then Morph 2 does a splendid job of that.
http://www.zynaptiq.com
* Audionamix's Trax Pro and Vocal Volume Control
This software seems to be able to isolate vocals from a stereo mix with
incredible fidelity -- and in some cases with
their delay/reverb effects intact!
However, while the EDM remix applications of this are clear, I was also struck
by the potential uses in more traditional music mixing, particularly for
cleaning up band spill on a scratch vocal mic after the fact -- you know, when
it becomes clear that the singer will never perform that well ever again! You
could also use it to rebalance the voices of an all-on-one mic backing-vocal
track, or the soloist in a classical-style recording. It's also worth pointing
out that Audionamix's technology appears to operate pretty effectively on any
monophonic signal, not just vocals, which
extends these kinds of spill-reduction
possibilities even further.
http://www.audionamix.com
* Shotput Pro Data Offloader With MD5 Checksum
While at the show, I attended a very interesting seminar with the UK Music
Producers Guild, at which they discussed the rather unloved, but vitally
important, issue of audio/session backup and
archiving. In attendance were three
of the MPG's producers as well as an R&D guy
from the G-Tech hard-drive company.
In the process, it was pointed out that neither Mac nor PC use any
data-verification process at all when copying
files between drives -- they just
send the data and hope for the best! In this
context, producer Gareth Jones then
mentioned the cross-platform Shotput Pro software, which is only $99 and does
fully verified copies. In addition, it also
provides the facility for including
an MD5 checksum file with the copies to allow
later confirmation that nothing's
been corrupted. (MD5 is the same thing a lot of mastering engineers use when
sending DDPi files to the pressing plant.)
http://www.imagineproducts.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5
I uncovered lots of possibiltiies for new library multitracks at the show too,
so stay tuned for those additions over the coming months. Speaking of which...
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3 NEW MULTITRACKS
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Regular users of the library will already be familiar with the band
Spektakulatius on account of the two songs I
uploaded from their Christmas album
'10', record I recorded and mixed myself. Well,
we also recorded a more general
vocal-led acoustic jazz album at the same time,
and here's one of the songs from
it, an intimate quartet-plus-singer live take of 'Wayfaring Stranger':
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm#Spektakulatius2
The last of our The Long Wait uploads for the
time being, this track 'Drag' is a
heady mix of bitterness and aching beauty. Incidentally, if you'd like to
support the band, do check out their Patreon page at
https://www.patreon.com/thelongwait, because
they're offering behind-the-scenes
small-studio recording/mixing tutorials as part of their rewards scheme:
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm#TheLongWait
And it's also our last upload from Skelpolu's
debut album release, this time the
densely woven euphoria of 'Entwine'. Don't
forget to check out the album 'Oculus
Within' at http://www.skelpolu.com/oculus_within.html too!
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm#Skelpolu
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SOS MIX RESCUE: BRUKS 'KAK TVOI DELA, VOVA?'
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Last month I uploaded the multitracks for Bruk's 'Kak Tvoi Dela, Vova?', but
this month there's even more to offer, because my remix of this track has just
been featured in Sound On Sound's May 2015 'Mix Rescue column:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may15/articles/mix_rescue_0515.htm
So if you like the sound of the library preview
mix (which is mine), then check
out the article for details of how I approached it. You can also download my
complete Reaper project file for that mix here to scrutinise all my specific
plug-in settings:
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk_ProjectMR1505.htm
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PATRICK TALBOT 'REASON TO LEAVE' ON CROWD AUDIO
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This months' Crowd Audio Playground competition features Patrick Talbot's
'Reason To Leave', and Bjorgvin and I critique a couple of those competitions
mixes in this month's associated Crowd Audio Premium podcast. We also spend a
lot of time talking about how to approach mix-referencing when you're don't
really have any directly comparable tracks available.
http://crowdaudio.com/competition/banned-zoo-black-betty-sponsored-sound-sound/
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4 NEW 'MIX REVIEW' CRITIQUES
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The latest SOS issue carries 4 new critiques of commercial productions,
including:
* Jack White: 'Lazaretto'
* Angelique Kidjo: 'EvE'
* Paramore: 'Ain't It Fun'
* Marvin Gaye: 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine'
You can read these (and more than 200 previous Mix Review critiques) for free
here:
http://www.cambridge-mt.com/MikeSenior.htm#MixReview
See you next month!
Cheers,
Mike Senior.
PS. Sound On Sound have just reviewed 'Recording Secrets For The Small Studio'
too, if you fancy getting their verdict:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may15/articles/recording-secrets-small-studio.htm
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