NEWS
Audio Activity
AES Show Introduces New Tips and Tools for Post Sound
by Michael Kunkes photos by David Klein
 AES Show |
The theme of the Audio Engineering Conference and Exhibition, V.121, held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center October 5-8, was “Where Audio Comes Alive.” But in a show that was promoted as being about live and home surround sound, there was much for post-production professionals to ponder–– including the shrinking gaps between mixing hardware and software, high-definition, high-resolution audio and video integration, and dealing with emerging workflow issues.
At the end of July, Digidesign (www.digidesign.com) began shipping ProTools 7.2, among the single most significant upgrades to come along in the product’s 15-year history. The only fly in the ointment was incompatibility with the new dual-core Intel Xeon-based MacPro. That glitch was apparently only temporary, as Digi addressed this in September with version 7.2.1, just in time for the AES show. Although (as past experience with Mac processor upgrades has shown) third-party developers may run somewhat behind with Intel Mac-compatible plug-ins, the ProTools 7.2 and Intel Mac make for one powerful package.
 Digidesign booth at the 121st AES Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. |
The new version is packed with usability enhancements, such as a new Group Attributes Dialogue box, with features such as linked surround pans and linked inserts across a number of channels. According to Gannon Kashiwa, Digi’s professional products market manager, “In the past, if you needed to copy a surround move that was, for instance, left front to rear surround right, you actually had to copy a number of playlists manually from track to track. Now, you simply link pans across any number of tracks and make your move. For sound designers alone, this is tremendously significant. Also, with linked inserts, if you have a bunch of background vocals and want to change the EQ across six tracks, you just link those together and you’re done. As we peel the onion of the Group Attributes Dialogue, we’ll be looking at a lot of other new things.”
The new version also adds VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) groups, enabling a master fader to control a group of track levels without having to change their audio groups or losing any of their individual automation; single operation importing of video and audio from QuickTime; and a SignalTools metering suite, composed of PhaseScope and Surround-Scope, with a new user interface developed last year. The suite includes a host of metering types that can be applied to strategic locations on any track––a boon for dialogue editors and mixing engineers.
 Digidesign's Gannon Kashiwa. |
Probably the biggest advance in 7.2 is the increased video/audio integration. “We’ve changed the entire video editing paradigm in ProTools,” says Kashiwa. “Now you can have multiple video tracks and multiple clips on a track and edit them freely with the same commands you can cut audio with. You can cut across everything in a session––hit shuffle, cut and you have your video and audio cut all at once. And you can use all your audio tools––spot, slip, nudge, trimmer––just as you would for audio.
“Also huge is the ability to take your video and audio mix and bounce it down to a QuickTime movie with any codec found in QT Pro, and e-mail a quick snapshot for client approval,” he continues. This is something that post people have wanted for years, according to Kashiwa. “We’re not making an overture to bring video people into picture editing on the ProTools platform,” he says. “But we are definitely making ProTools more capable in the video world, to create a more inter-operable environment between the two worlds.”
At AES, Digidesign also showed its ICON family of consoles with significant automation and mixing enhancements that 7.2 and 7.2.1 bring to the D-Control and D-Command worksurfaces. “We have a unique opportunity with our proprietary Ethernet control protocol to make our worksurfaces more deeply integrated with ProTools, as opposed to other, MIDI-based surfaces. “Kashiwa explains. He talks about the new automation features on ICON as well as the field recording enhancements that will represent a huge shift for production sound editors who will now be able to use ProTools behind the scenes, as it were, to do transparent, complex linking of multi-channel audio files by bringing them into ProTools complete with all related metadata and freely switching to alternate channels.
 Glyph's Peter Glanville. |
Glyph Technologies (www.glyphtech.com) demonstrated three new FireWire 800 versions of the hot-swappable GT series of hard drives and enclosures, available in capacities of up to 750 Gb. With bus speeds roughly double those of FireWire 400 drives, the new GT Key drives (the company’s hot-swap enclosures have also been upgraded to FireWire 800) utilize Oxford’s 924 chip to bridge Seagate’s newest SATA drives to FireWire 800.
According to Glyph’s director of marketing, Peter Glanville, the new drives promise higher bandwidth and more track count. “ProTools, Nuendo and other audio applications stream a ton of tracks off drives, and usually, those drives just can’t keep up with the number of tracks you’re asking them to handle,” he says. “To help with this problem, tracks often get spread across multiple drives, much as with a RAID in video storage.
“In audio, using multiple single volumes is much more stable than an actual RAID array, and some audio applications don’t support the use of RAID arrays,” Glanville explains. “With our FireWire GT 800 versions, you get more tracks per drive and less spreading tracks across drives, with fewer back-up problems. It makes the back-up and restore process a lot easier if you can manage to keep high track count sessions on single drives. That’s the bottom line.”
 Dolby's booth. |
Dolby Laboratories (www.dolby.com) made big news for post professionals with its all-new Media Producer Suite, which it had previously demonstrated as alpha version software and GUI mock-ups at AES 2005. Media Producer, which consists of three programs––Dolby Media Encoder, Dolby Media Decoder and Dolby Media Tools––is the company’s first file-based product. “This is a totally new direction for us,” says Steve Venezia, manager, DTV broadcast support. “Initially, we are releasing the full media suite, which will support Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus (the company’s new codec), MLP lossless for DVD audio and Dolby True HD.
At the booth presentations, Venezia demonstrated all three components, showing, among other things, how Media Tools can work in pre-encoded files, updating metadata on files that have already been encoded without having to do re-encoding. He also ran training sessions for Media Producer. In addition, Dolby demonstrated the Dolby Lake Processor, a DSP system that provides advanced loudspeaker management and EQ functionality, with patent-pending, front-panel metering and control through its all-new Portal interface.
The company also debuted another of its new generation of file-based products, the DP600 Program Optimizer, an all-new intelligent audio loudness analysis and correction system, compatible with most audio formats. The DP600 builds on technology developed for Dolby’s LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter with Dialogue Intelligence and gives users the ability to automatically normalize the loudness of any file-based programming without impacting the original dynamic range.
 Dolby's Steve Venezia. |
Venezia adds that the new Media Encoder will also encode audio for HD DVD and Blu-Ray disc formats, as well as standard DVD and DVD Audio. The encoder comes with a centralized server system that can accommodate multiple rooms in a facility. “You can have five or more suites, all creating jobs and sending them onto the same server, via the encoder client software,” Venezia states.
Dolby Media Producer Suite carries a list price of US $11,000. Separately, the Media encoder sells for $8,000, the Media Decoder for $1,900 and Media Tools for $1,800. “We used to make products that encoded only Dolby Digital,” Venezia said. “Now, you are actually buying four encoders and they can all be accessed by multiple rooms. The price seems high, but when you break it down by the number of hardware encoders you had to buy in the past, it’s actually a tremendous savings.”
Beginning at the IBC trade show in September and continuing to AES, Euphonix (www.euphonix.com) has been dazzling new and existing customers with several new roll-outs built for use around its Flagship System 5 Digital Audio Mixing consoles. Foremost is the launch of the new DF66 SuperCore high-speed modular DSP, designed to work in concert with both Max Air and System 5 console models. Euphonix will also be showing a range of new modular digital/analogue audio converters and remote mic pre-amps aimed at the broadcast market. The new converters complement the company’s existing range of multi-channel input/output (I/O) converters by being highly modularized, enabling them to be easily tailored for any facility’s specific I/O setups.
The SuperCore is actually a blend of DSP and silicon FPGA technologies, providing full redundancy protection and 40-bit floating point, opening up an extremely wide range of features for Euphonix consoles. Each SuperCore card features eight analogue devices and an FPGA-based 4k-channel audio router. When fully equipped with six cards in the DF66 chassis, up to 25,000 discreet signal paths are available, all controlled from the console’s proprietary PatchNet software. Each card also adds four MADI outputs, and greatly increases the SuperCore’s I/O capability to handle a host of other external digital audio workstation (DAW) devices such as ProTools and Nuendo.
“The new SuperCore gives us more channels and allows us to go bigger and faster for less money, and that’s the bottom line, especially for film people,” says Andrew Wild, vice president of marketing for Euphonix, whose major clients for System 5 include Todd-AO, Lantana and Pinewood Shepperton Studios.
 Euphonix's Andrew Wild. |
Finally, Euphonix displayed its talent for multiple personalities with the new System 5-MC Integrated DAW controller, a highly flexible recording, editing and mixing system. Based on the System 5 control surface, the System 5-MC uses the EuCon protocol to tightly integrate (through Ethernet) with audio and video applications such as ProTools, Logic Pro, Nuendo, Pyramix, Digital Performer, Final Cut Studio and others. The control surface can be fitted with eight 48-channel strips and includes the MC Media Application controller for master console functions. When not built into a System 5 console, the MC works as a stand-alone controller for use with a variety of audio and video applications.
“People are doing more of everything right now and have to be skilled in a variety of applications,” offers Wild. “The biggest trend as far as we are concerned is that people still need control surfaces. Ten years ago, a console had its own DSP core and its own I/O. In some applications, such as live broadcast and high-end film dubbing, this is still the case, but now it’s all about workstations––and our EuCon protocol lets those control surfaces hook straight into work stations and run a variety of DAWs right from the control surface.”
For example, the film mixing consoles at Lantana can add a computer and software and can actually control ProTools from the same System 5 surface that is currently controlling the Euphonix DSP, according to Wild. “Our EuCon Protocol is all about connecting our control surfaces to DAWs, and companies such as Steinberg, Apple and Merging have been writing direct EuCon adaptors for their software to support that protocol for total integration with all MC and System 5 control surfaces,” he adds. The MC lists for just under $20,000 and System 5-MC from $50,000.
 Steinberg's Lars Baumann. |
Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (www.steinberg.net) displayed, in prototype form, an as yet unnamed new synchronizer device for Nuendo. Developed in cooperation with hardware manufacturer CB Electronics, the new unit will be fitted with a wide range of physical interfaces for machine control and synchronization, including support for LTC, MTC/MMC, Sony 9-pin machine control and emulation, Wordclock and GPIO.
According to Lars Baumann, Steinberg’s senior product manager for Nuendo, the new hardware will complete the existing Nuendo feature set for sync and machine control. “Despite the current trend toward accomplishing ever more tasks using video within DAWs, many post people still have a requirement to integrate their audio workstation with other devices. The new hardware will couple the open, innovative and scalable Nuendo DAW technology with CB Electronics’ 25 years of experience.”
In a new technology rollout, Fairlight (www.fairlightau.com) simultaneously announced the introduction and shipping of the CC-1 Crystal Core, the world’s first all-FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), silicon technology-based audio acceleration platform and production engine. The patent-pending Crystal Core promises exponential performance gains by shrinking hardware into a single, purposed media-processing chip. With the programming flexibility of the FPGA chip, a single CC-1 card is capable of 200 channels of recording, editing, mixing and plug-ins, a wide choice of I/Os in analogue, digital and MADI (multiplexed audio digital interface), an extremely low latency of 0.5 millisecond and full processing capability on each channel, with eight-band EQ and three stages of dynamics on each channel. The first realization of the Crystal Core engine will be on all new Fairlight Dream II consoles, with free upgrades for current owners.
 Fairlight's John Lancken, right and Joe Hammer. |
According to Fairlight CEO John Lancken, FPGA technology is not new, having been used in military technology, complex physics engines and some production applications (including Avid’s DNA family), but never before to this extent. “You can put the equivalent of 64 DSP chips on a single FPGA,” he says. “DSP engines take years to build. A huge advantage to FPGA is the speed with which you can turn around a design, and everything in this first generation chip will go automatically into the next one––with no rewiring. Also, this one card takes the guesswork completely out of managing DSP resources. We call that guaranteed performance.”
Amid all the giants, some companies played small ball. Genelec (www.genelecusa.com) introduced two new multi-channel monitoring systems, designed specifically for post suites of 3,000 cubic feet or less. The 8020.LSE Espresso and 8030.LSE PowerPak systems also simplify the process of creating a new multi-channel monitoring system or upgrading an existing stereo monitoring environment to 5.1 sound. The 8020.LSE system consists of five Genelec 8020A two-way, bi-amplified active monitors matched with the new 7050B LSE series active subwoofer and sells for $2,995. The 8030.LSE, with five Genelec 8030A active monitors and one 7060B Active Subwoofer, sells for $5,400.
Technical directors, dubbing studios, and even production mixers might want to look at the LAWO (www.lawo.de) Z4 digital mini-mixer, ideally suited to small ENG vans. The windows-configurable Z4 integrates into any broadcast infrastructure; has four full stereo channels with gain, phase, fully parametric EQ, expander, compressor pan/balance and fader; can send and receive control commands via Ethernet; and sits on a desk with 26x32x5.5 footprint. Nagra (www.nagraaudio.com) showed its new ARES-4 digital handheld recorder, with built in mono and clip-on stereo electret mic. Designed for high-quality recording in hostile environments, the ARES-M has 1Gb built -in memory, and records in PCM and MPEG1 Layer II compressed recording formats.
 Customers at the Digidesign booth at the 121st AES Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. |
And finally, some software of interest. Studio Network Solutions (www.studionetworksolutions.com) showed a public beta version of Postmap, the company’s new search and management software for post-production workgroups that can quickly locate folders and files stored locally, remotely, offline or online. Designed for single or multiple location workgroup environments, the idea behind the program is to fill the void between simple OS-native search tools and complex digital asset management applications. Postmap can scan SANs, file servers, FireWire/USB discs, CDs and DVDs; easily builds customized templates of enhanced metadata, and allows users to create custom workflow profiles. Soundminer (www.soundminer.com) brought out V4 for Mac, with an all-new interface. The new version, with its iTunes look and server and web portal options, allows sound and music editors to search, audition, edit, process, design, spot and batch transfer into any of the leading DAWs and NLEs, with high resolution playback and conversion and the ability to read multiple metadata formats.
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production. He can be reached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.
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