NEWS
Future Sound
Audio Asset Companies Gear Up for DTV at AES
by Michael Kunkes photos by John Clifford
 123rd Audio Engineering Society (AES) Conference and Exhibit, held this year in October at the Javits Convention Center in New York. |
The clock is ticking. By February 17, 2009, federal law requires all full-power TV broadcast stations to stop broadcasting in analogue format and convert to the all-digital DTV format. Still, broadcasters for HDTV and television in general are moving forward at a herky-jerky pace toward the onrushing deadline. However, if the 123rd Audio Engineering Society (AES) Conference and Exhibit, held this year in October at the Javits Convention Center in New York is an indication, software and hardware manufacturers large and small are stepping into the breach to improve workflows, reduce costs and, in general, make the transition for broadcasters a lot more painless. Editors Guild Magazine spoke to a few creators of digital audio workstations (DAW), audio asset management and distribution software, and manufacturers of high-end mix consoles to find out just what the future might hold.
mSoft
 Doug Perkins of mSoft demonstrates MusicCue to AES attendees. |
In the area of digital asset management, mSoft (www.msoftinc.com) showed the latest version of MusicCue, the company’s cross-platform networked hard drive-based music search system, first introduced in 2002. With the new Version 4.9 supporting the Propeller-head/Steinberg jointly created ReWire protocol (which allows remote control and data transfer between DAWs and software), MusicCue is a complete turnkey server system that comes pre-loaded with 20 terabytes (each terabyte holds about 1,200 audio CDs), and can interface with almost any DAW, including ProTools, Fairlight, Avid, etc., over Ethernet or Intranet/Internet. The company’s client roster includes CBS, Fox, NFL Films, the NBA, BBC Wales and the CW.
 Screengrab of mSoft's MusicCue. |
“MusicCue is the first all-search tool for music libraries, and is the only one that offers all and any music libraries pre-digitized on an audio server system,” says Doug Perkins, vice president of sales and marketing for the Woodland Hills, California-based company (whose library currently includes over 200,000 CDs). “MusicCue is unique in its ability to create cue sheets from any standard EDL that are accurate down to the single frame. That’s a huge time and money savings in the area of music reporting. It takes a tedious job and reduces it down to a mouse click.” A typical real-world two-terabyte system (about five DAW users) would cost about $30,000 to purchase, or about $750 monthly on a 36-month subscription option.
The company also presented its similar asset management tools ServerSound, used for sound effects, and VisionClip, for video clips. All three can exist on the same server. “We are essentially an alternate delivery system for CDs, which are great until you have too many of them,” Perkins adds. “We’re not involved at all with licensing; we are purely a management tool.” Perkins says the company also distributes mSoftPlayer, a media player that will play audio or video, interact with any workstation and batch transfer files directly into ProTools. “Since we use an Internet browser as the user interface, any browser-compatible media player [WMP, RA, etc.] can be used to play audio files. An editor or music supervisor can easily re-import files, even if your Pro Tools system crashes.”
Enco
 Enco's DADtv. |
Headquartered in Southfield, Mich-igan, Enco, Inc. (www.enco.com) is usually known as a leading supplier of digital audio delivery systems for radio, but is stepping up its broadcast presence, mainly in the TV remote truck. The company showed DADtv, a packaged hardware-software, expandable file server configuration of the company’s DAD audio delivery system. DADtv’s main end result is its ability to bring full 5.1 surround sound to the everyday TV world. The software components include a full library and database access module, full- and half-screen array panels that simulate “cart wall” panels; four virtual playback machines, a virtual recorder and an audio format conversion module––all packed into a Pentium P4/PCI rack mount workstation. Fully configured DADtv systems start at about $8,000.
“DAD provides instant access to all audio material on a network and accelerates the process of adding voiceovers, audio effects and audio sequencing, and enables the incorporation of discrete 5.1 surround into HDTV broadcasts,” says Enco’s vice president of sales and marketing Don Backus, who adds that the company’s expanding television business includes NBC, CNN, ESPN, Paramount, MSNBC, Golf Channel, Weather Channel and numerous local stations.
 AlterMedia's Joel Stoner. |
AlterMedia
Another asset management product, AlterMedia’s StudioSuite8 (www.studiosuite.com), is a FileMaker Pro-based studio management program that made its debut back in 1998. Now employed by facilities in over 40 nations, this current release, which shipped in April of this year, is a total rebuild, with hierarchical security, greater scalability, and full integration with software from across the production and management spectrum,
including QuickBooks, ProTools, iCal and Final Cut Pro.
 Screengrab of AlterMedia's StudioSuite8. |
According to AlterMedia president and program creator Joel Stoner, “This is by far the most expansive release we’ve ever had. StudioSuite 8 gives studios a highly evolved structure for facility organization and management, right out of the box.” StudioSuite 8 has a retail price of $749 for the initial license and $449 for each additional networked workstation.
Minnetonka Audio Software
Yet another entry in the audio asset management area comes from Minnesota-based Minnetonka Audio Software (www.minnetonkaaudio.com). In addition to a slew of DVD authoring tools, the company rolled out AudioTools AWE (Audio Workstation Engine), a stand-alone or client server-based audio asset manager and processor. AudioTools AWE is used for converting, transcoding, encoding and applying plug-ins to sets of audio files in a batch mode. Users specify input files, configure a chain of processors and set the parameters for each processor. All files are automatically processed and placed in the specified output location.
 Minnetonka Audio Software's Steve Clarke. |
“Managing content efficiently is essential in every media organization,” says Steve Clarke, Minnetonka’s director of marketing, who also presented an exhibitor seminar on AudioTools workflow architecture at the Javits Center. “Audio production departments manage large numbers of files requiring different file formats, sample rates, compression formats and processing requirements, often by hand.
AudioTools AWE is designed as the first step in a structured audio workflow for people who are frustrated with the growing cost in time, money and resources associated with traditional file-processing solutions.”
 Screengrab of Minnetonka's SurCode. |
Steinberg Media Technologies
The long awaited Nuendo 4 audio post-production system from Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (www.steinberg.net) made its first AES appearance. Two major advantages—improved asset management and accelerated workflows—are the hallmarks of the new release, which is compatible with Windows XP and Vista, and Pentium chip Macs running OS 10.4 and above. For asset management, Nuendo 4 features an all-new automation engine that continues its trend towards blending DAW environments with the functionality of a mixing console. The new automated features include preview mode, punch logs, virgin territories and a “touch collect” assistant, in addition to a set of 20 post pro editing commands and tool modifiers that will enable users to move, place and trim audio anywhere in a timeline in a far more time-efficient fashion.
For asset management, Nuendo 4 has added what it calls “MediaBay,” a database environment intended to replace numerous external effects databases. MediaBay provides full control over all effects and sample libraries within Nuendo, and also browses, archives, retrieves and searches for audio and MIDI files, video data, project files and instrument/plug-in presets. The plug-in architecture on Nuendo has also been improved; with 38 surround and sidechaining-capable VST3 plug-ins, three compressors, an expan-der and a limiter that cover a range of dynamics, spatial effects and filtering.
 The Steinberg Media Technologies Booth. |
One key new plug-in, the Post Filter is a terrific restoration tool that quickly finds and re-moves unwanted noise, especially of the type found in scratch dialogue and location re-cordings. Another plug-in, Channel EQ, provides up to seven different characteristics per band, as well as an inverse switch to enable quick flips between amplification and gain reduction. In addition, Nuendo now has the ability to work with track presets, which are basically snapshots of entire track/channel strips. Track presets are managed with the MediaBay search engine and are available for audio, MIDI and instrument tracks.
In an effort to make Nuendo 4 a more editor- and mixer-specific program, many features—such as the score editor and drum editor—that were included in previous versions and overlapped the company’s signature Cubase music composition program, have been eliminated. So, to increase Nuendo’s overall functionality and cost management, Steinberg is offering as an added option what it calls the Nuendo Expansion Kit (NEK). The kit consists mainly of tools for Cubase music production and provides complete compatibility for Cubase users within the Nuendo environment. Nuendo 4 retails for $1,799 and the expansion kit goes for an additional $299.
Euphonix
 Euphonix's Andrew Wild. |
Euphonix (www.euphonix.com) took a big step into the HDTV/5.1 surround world with the introduction of the S5 Fusion console. Modeled in a charcoal finish to blend in with the current thinking in studio design, the S5 Fusion fills an industry need for a lower-cost mix console that can handle large numbers of tracks; it gets its name from the combination of Euphonix’ System 5 film dubbing consoles (and DSP SuperCore engine) and its DAW controllers. The console includes DSP channels and a full-sized surround monitor matrix. Plus, it has EuCon high-speed Ethernet control of multiple DAWs. This means that the mixer can mix tracks inside the DAW from the console surface and feed these submixes (similar to the way film mixers do pre-mixes) into the DSP channels for final automated mixing of the surround stems.
According to Andrew Wild, Euphonix’s vice president of marketing, “The console is targeted at HDTV audio post and film facilities that are working in surround with sources being fed from digital audio workstations. It is priced substantially lower [starting at $150,000 with one DSP card] than our System 5 consoles, as it is limited in the number of channels it can support [up to 154] and the number of faders that can fit in the lower cost frame. Mixing inside the DAWs from the console surface is what saves money, making it possible to mix hundreds of tracks for substantially less than a larger film dubbing console.”
Digidesign
 Digidesign's Gannon Kashiwa. |
Digidesign (www.digidesign.com) also displayed its new specialty design console. The ICON D-Control ES is a large-format console that joins the original D-Control and the medium-format ICON D-Command in the ICON integrated console group. Stylized in dark tones like the Euphonix console, the D-Control ES features updated, high-contrast text and graphics for improved low-light viewing and a new ergonomically friendly switch LED color layout. Like other ICON systems, the D-Control ES fully integrates with ProTools HD software, with complete recall of session parameters, routing and plug-ins. In addition, Digi is offering current D-Control users a kit to convert to the D-Control ES. At press time, no pricing information for the D-Control ES was available from Digidesign.
The company announced its new C/24 mid-format control surface for ProTools HD and ProTools LE systems. C/24 follows up on the company’s signature Control/24, but has a sleeker look with all-updated front-end analogue circuitry and more affordability than the earlier design. It also provides a full complement of analogue inputs and a highly versatile monitoring section. More importantly though, it gives mixers, editors and recordists a more tactile way of interfacing with ProTools. The C/24 carries a retail price of $9,995, but for the AES show––and a limited time thereafter––Digidesign is offering a pair of bundles that combine either a ProTools HD or LE system, along with correspondingly sized bundles of Digidesign plug-ins, for $12,995 or $18,995, respectively.
 Digidesign's ICON D-Control ES console. |
Finally, there is the rollout of ProTools 7.4, a significant upgrade. Chief among the new workflow enhancements and music tools for ProTools HD, LE and M-Powered is a dynamic new precision music composition and production tool called Elastic Time. The new feature radically alters timeline thinking, allowing users to easily change the tempo and timing of pretty much any kind of sound file without having to cut any audio tracks. Users can also easily audition or import loops and audio files, instantly synching to a session’s overall tempo. According to Gannon Kashiwa, Digidesign’s marketing manager for professional products, “This is a revolutionary new way to manipulate the timing of audio events in ProTools, all in real time. It’s also flexible and really easy to us––and it goes way beyond simple loop and tempo conforming, with fantastic sound.”
Other key features enhance and tighten the integration of ProTools functions with Avid. For example, the new Avid Media Station/PT 2.7 software (running on a separate, dedicated computer), coupled with Avid’s new video satellite option, allows ProTools editors to play Avid video sequences in sync with ProTools HD, eliminating time consuming video exports. In addition, ProTools 7.4 users running on Windows XP will be able to record and play back audio and video sources directly from Avid’s ISIS shared storage. ProTools 7.4 will be available late this year for most Windows and Mac OS X Tiger systems, with announcements of support for Windows Vista and OS X Panther to be determined. The ProTools standard upgrade will cost $199; and an upgrade from ProTools 7.3 will go for $79.
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