NAB99: Audio
The Sound of Things to Come
by Ezra Dweck
When I first started working in sound, everyone cut on these hulking green beasts called Moviolas that smelled like machine oil and were louder than a blender cranking out margaritas. The Moviola's user interface was the same as in my car: pedals and a hand brake. Now everyone cuts on a workstation whose user interface is the same one I use to check my e-mail or write this article: a mouse and keyboard.
Computer technology, along with the exponential growth in processor power and disk storage, is driving new innovations and making existing technologies work better. One result is the proliferation of the digital audio workstation, now the standard tool for anyone making a living in sound.
At NAB99 I went to look for new and interesting sound technology. On the show floor there was a constant rumble from all of the booths vying for my attention, people talking over loudspeakers and incessant air-conditioning noise. I wasn't sure where to start... go look at that cool new HDTV monitor? What about that neat camera crane? I had to keep reminding myself that I was here to report on the audio stuff. So, after looking around for a day or so, I came away with the following list of cool things for sound professionals.
Mackie Digital 8 Bus
Mackie, maker of very useful and comparatively inexpensive mixing consoles, has raised the bar for small studio-type mixing consoles with the new Digital 8 Bus (D8B). The D8B will probably appeal mostly to mixers who can use a sidecar with 24 automated inputs, or the editor who needs to predub a bunch of stuff in a hurry. It features 24 inputs, eight bus outs, 24 channel-assign outs, 5.1 panning, and full parametric EQ, DSP and dynamics on every channel.
The D8B is also fully automated and has moving faders, EQ, pans and mutes. You can select which of these items to automate, or you can turn them all off and work manually. The automation interface shows up on an RGB monitor. All functions can be accessed either on screen with a mouse or on the console's surface with the traditional knobs and buttons. The D8B also has various I/O modules you can purchase for SPDIF, AES/EBU, etc. Look for a special appearance on the dialog boxes by the company mascot, a funny looking Chihuahua.
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Getting tired of walking down the hall to your rack of tapes and CDs just to listen to an effect? Sick of paging through three-ring binders full of typewritten sound descriptions? Msoft's Server Sound is a new comprehensive sound-library database system designed to run on a Mac or PC over your private Ethernet network. Using a dedicated server for the database and sound files, it displays the results of your search through your favorite web browser, then allows you to play the selected sound files over the network (handling just about every audio file format known). If you like what you hear, click, and like magic the file appears in your open session. Need some extra listening stations? No problem. Just pop a few iMacs or cheap PCs with sound cards on your network and you've got auditioning stations.
Some other hip features are pre-entered commercial CD libraries that include both audio and descriptions; a spotting system that lets you organize your show and select sounds by reel, scene and spot; and the ability to do automated batch transfers from your central library server to your workstations.
Digidesign Pro Tools 5.0 and Pro Control Mixing Console
Digidesign looks to be focusing on post-production needs with the new 5.0 alpha version of Pro Tools. Though it's not finished, the system demonstrated at NAB looks like it will be incorporating many useful post features from Avid's discontinued AudioVision DAW.
A feature promised for 5.x versions is native support for .wav and .aiff file formats; for folks with mixed platform shops, this will be very helpful. Also promised is the ability to automatically cascade track and voice assignments so you won't have to point, click and scroll to assign channels, thus ending every editor and mixer's lament. Now if they will only add a find function to that "Where is?" dialog box...
Also from Digidesign are the Pro Control combo mixing console and Pro Tools interface. Pro Control builds up in banks of eight moving faders to a maximum of 32 physical faders, although you can have up to 164 playback channels hidden in sub layers. It sounds confusing, but it's actually pretty quick to navigate around. Pro Control also features full automation of pans, EQ and DSP plug-ins, although you'll need some extra DSP farms and audio interfaces to really make it go for mixes over 24 tracks. This looks like an excellent choice for in-house mixes, especially if you've got an all, or mostly all, Pro Tools shop.
Zaxcom Deva
The Zaxcom Deva is a compact, direct-to-hard-drive portable recorder and mixer. Finally you can record four channels without having to drag out a couple of DAT machines or a Nagra-D. The Deva will record in 24-bit 96 kHz if you like, or you can save a little space and do 16-bit 48 kHz. It runs for about three hours off of one battery and will record eight hours of audio on one four-gig drive. It will also transfer material to an external hard drive in either .wav or .sd2 format, although to get the .sd2 stuff to work with Pro Tools you'll need software that mounts DOS drives on your Mac (like DOS Mounter 98).
Tascam MMR-8 and MMP-16
With the MMR-8 and MMP-16, Tascam has developed a solid replacement for the ubiquitous DA-88, and mag recorder/dubbers as well. The MMR-8 records to removable hard drives and allows direct export to Pro Tools, Waveframe, Sonic Solutions and Fairlight systems. I recently worked on a show where all the foley was shot to MMR-8. We sent our drives to the foley stage; they shot directly to them and then sent them back. We opened the sessions on our workstations with nary a hitch.
The MMP-16 is a playback-only version of the MMR-8; it plays sessions directly off the very drives you just had plugged into your workstation. These units look to be the first really viable generation of digital dubbers. Tascam also sells the software that makes all of this interoperability possible, called "Trans Audio Pipeline." Running on a PC under Windows 95/98/NT, it will mount a PC- or Mac-formatted drive and transfer sessions to or from Waveframe, Pro Tools and Sonic Solutions systems (Fairlight support is coming soon). Tascam appears to be really listening to what post audio professionals are saying.
Fibre-Channel RAID
There are too many manufacturers of fibre-channel RAIDs (drive arrays) and associated network devices to pick one that stands out. While still pretty expensive, this technology is worthy of mention because the protocol has been around long enough to be considered mature. With fibre channel, you can talk to a drive one foot away from your computer or one almost a half mile away at the same 80 MB/second speed. It won't be long before you'll see every workstation on a fibre-channel network, connecting to other workstations and a central server as if they were all locally mounted drives.
Well, those are my picks for this year's NAB show. With a convention of that size, I know I probably missed a few other cool bits of technology but there's always next year to go back and check out the latest and greatest. Now I need to save this file and switch back to my unfinished reel, whose waveforms are grinning at me from the edges of the very same monitor I'm using to view this. Try that on a Moviola.
Ezra Dweck is a re-recording mixer at
Weddington Productions in North Hollywood, Calif.
He can be reached via e-mail
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 20, No. 3 - May/June1999
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