NEWS
Big Sound Getting Smaller
A Report from the 125th AES Convention
by Michael Kunkes
 |
The 125th Audio Engineering Society (AES) Show returned to the Moscone Center in San Francisco October 2-5, opening with a keynote address by Record Plant co-founder Chris Stone. Entitled “The Artist Owns the Industry,” Stone’s speech focused on recording artists’ need to develop a sophisticated approach to operating their own business, and how traditional engineers can remain relevant and play a meaningful role in the ongoing evolution (or devolution, to some ears) of the recording industry in this age of DIY and P2P.
For audio post, the theme is less clear. The emphasis was not on high-end products like big new mix theatre consoles. Rather, the accent was on upgrades to existing mixing and DAW technologies, software integration and products that are serving two masters—big studio operations and “project studios”—smaller facilities and even home studios that have used low-end gear for years and are finally receiving the tools and processing power to at least compete. That gap, however, looms large again as company by company, the industry ratchets up plans to meet early demands for 7.1 mixing. But without any formal or informal studio configuration workflow standards as yet, 7.1 is seeing its first production testing ground in video games and Blu-ray encoding technologies, which currently supports seven different speaker layouts. Editors Guild Magazine ventured onto the show floor to record impressions––and look at some cool new gear.
Euphonix Master Series MC Control, left, and MC Mix, right, on Apple
Logic Pro
8 system.
 Euphonix Master Series MC Control, left, and MC Mix, right, on Apple Logic Pro 8 system. |
Euphonix (www.euphonix.com) presented its new Artist Series controllers, consisting of the MC Mix and MC Control, for the first time at AES (both were introduced at NAMM in January). Euphonix has brought its experience with large consoles and DSP processing to bear on these new small-footprint systems, which are aimed squarely at the DAW and personal studio markets: sound editors, designers, effects editors and single position mixing of smaller shows. Both systems are driven by the EuCon transport protocol, which allows a console control surface to connect via high-speed Ethernet to either a DAW such as ProTools Logic or CuBase, or a picture editing application such as Final Cut Pro, which was the configuration demo set up at the Euphonix booth. In short, the Artist series works with any application that supports EuCon, HUI or Mackie Control protocols.
MC Control (around $1,500) is a complete video and audio controller, featuring a jog/shuttle wheel to navigate through projects, four motorized faders and eight knobs for controlling audio levels and panning, plus a comprehensive set of customizable Soft Keys for all top-level Final Cut Pro functions that are triggered directly from a high-resolution touch-screen display. The MC Mix, with a suggested retail price of $999, features eight faders and knobs to control audio levels and panning within Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, as well as eight high-resolution OLED displays to show metering information, pan positions and more. MC Mix can be used either as a stand-alone or in conjunction with the MC Control, and up to four MC Mix units can join to create a single position desktop console with 32 faders.
“This kind of high-speed connectivity between a control surface and a software application is the way the industry is going,” says Euphonix’s vice president of marketing Andrew Wild. “Over the last several years, we’ve been moving away from complete console systems and expensive hardware to workstation-based solutions that require controllers, making no differentiation between audio and video applications. The EuCon protocol is a prime example of that trend.” Euphonix also has added MOTU’s Digital Performer to a growing list of EuCon developers that includes Apple, Steinberg, Merging Technologies, Cakewalk, Apogee and others.
 Screengrabs from ProTools 8. |
Digidesign (www.digidesign.com) previewed ProTools 8, the most significant upgrade since version 7.2 two years gave us Destructive Punch recording and the Group Attributes dialogue box. The new version will be a lot nicer to look at, with a much enhanced user interface that includes a more varied color palette and higher contrast text and graphics. Also on board are dozens of new bundled plug-ins, including five new virtual instruments and 20 effects. Three versions are being released—the flagship ProTools/HD line, ProTools LE and ProTools M-Powered (for interface with M-Audio hardware devices such as Project Mix I/O). No pricing information was made available.
Expanded editing features include Elastic Pitch (which expands the “Elastic Time” technology from version 7.4), an easy way for editors to transpose music in real time in the edit window, a doubling of the inserts per channel from five to ten; enhanced controller integration for Digidesign and M-Audio control surfaces, upgraded ICON console integration, a new track compositing workflow (which allows users to composite from multiple takes), and HD QuickTime support for Intel Macs. For ProTools/HD 8, there are substantial support enhancements for ProTools/HD hardware, with support for the new Satellite Link option, which allows users to control up to five ProTools/HD systems as one. In addition, the new Video Satellite and Video Satellite LE options bring Avid and Quick Time HD/SD video playback into the ProTools/HD audio workflow without sacrificing audio track counts or processing power.
ProTools LE and ProTools M-Powered, aimed at project studio owners, now support up to 48 simultaneous audio tracks as standard (and up to 64 audio tracks by adding the new Music Production Toolkit 2 or DV Toolkit 2 onto ProTools LE only). Digidesign is also releasing a new Complete Production Toolkit for the LE version that combines the content of both toolkits and offers up to 128 simultaneous tracks and 7.1 surround mix capabilities.
Max Gutnik, Digidesign’s market manager of professional products, says, “I don’t think the industry is moving toward home/project studio as much as the tools are enabling people to get better results than ever before. Home/project studios have been in vogue for years, but the capabilities have been limited. I think Digidesign has led the way in this regard, offering better and better solutions for the project studio that are still compatible in the largest facilities around the world. Though the most advanced project studios use ProTools/HD, ProTools 8 LE makes this even easier, with triple the number of tracks out of the box. And with the Complete Production Toolkit, LE users get 128 tracks and can finally mix in 7.1 surround.”
Steinberg North America (www.steinberg.net) brought out Nuendo 4.2.2 (available as a download for all registered users of Nuendo 4), intended mainly to extend support for its new external hardware products, including the MR 816 CSX/X advanced integration interfaces. While the focus of the upgrade is largely under-the-hood stuff, some improvements to the Nuendo workflow are included, such as new key commands for the MediaBay proprietary sound management system, new sync options and support for the new VST Sound universal media management format, which integrates audio and video files as well as plug-ins and track presets directly into the MediaBay.
Nuendo 4.2.2 also offers enhanced support for existing audio hardware under OS X and a group of monitoring improvements, such as the ability to control monitoring levels and panning directly from the mixer. The company also showed its new multiple-format Sync Station box that has been in development for over a year.
 The DNS3000 Dialogue Noise Suppression System from Cedar Audio. |
The UK’s Cedar Audio (www.cedar-audio.com) brought out new versions of two of its most popular high-end noise suppression products. The company showed the DNS 3000, the latest incarnation of the Cedar Box dialogue noise suppression system, shown only in prototype form at NAB. According to Cedar president Gordon Reid, “While you can use the DNS 3000 just like the Oscar-winning DNS 1000 [which it is designed to supplant] purely as a black box with a physical control surface and audio I/O in real time, we wanted to add the ProTools capabilities of the DNS 2000. The difference is that the DNS 3000 is completely self-contained and does not need to hook up to a ProTools remote plug-in. There’s also 99 snapshot memories so, provided you have the correct time code going in, you can do a complete automated dial-up noise suppression by using the 3000’s internal memory. The 2000 and 3000 are also session-compatible with each other, so you can move units easily from one studio to another.”
The DNS 3000 will carry a street price of around $9,800. The company also released version 5.1 of the Cambridge audio restoration workstation and server, which, Reid says, while not a major re-creation, does add much improved time code reading and generation, embedded BEXT chunk metadata handling and sync playback speeds of up to 1,000 percent of real time. Reid was also on hand as the original CEDAR system was inducted into the TECnology (Technical Excellence and Creativity) Hall of Fame.
In field recording, Sound Devices LLC (www.sounddevices.com) debuted the CL-8 Controller for the 788T eight-track digital recorder, which was introduced earlier this year at NAB. The CL-8 is a mixing control surface companion for the 788T and features eight large rotary faders to control each of the eight inputs of the 788T. In addition to allowing users to quickly assign inputs to the main left and right record tracks, the CL-8 provides two additional recording tracks through its associated firmware, and these can be used to provide auxiliary sends for more comprehensive setups.
In plug-in news, Waves Audio (www.waves.com) announced the release of SSL G-Channel, the fourth plug-in the company has created under license from Solid State Logic EQ, which consolidates custom EQ and Dynamics modules for the SSL SL4000 console series into a single tool, in native and TDM versions. Also, McDSP (www. mcdsp.com) introduced three new plugs-ins for ProTools: the DE555 advanced de-esser, the NF575 noise filter, and the FutzBox distortion and noise generator for creating SIMs (Simulated Impulse Models; not true Impulse Responses).
 Blastwave's Sonopedia. |
At NAB earlier this year, Blastwave FX (www.blastwavefx.com) released Sono-pedia, which the company says is the first professional all-purpose HD sound effects library for HD producers. The box contains over 20,000 effects (with embedded metadata) ranging over 170 GB, with multi-format delivery in 24/48, 16/44.1 broadcast WAV and MP3 reference files. Blastwave also an-nounced a new partnership with Glyph Technologies to offer Sonopedia and its other libraries, including BlastDrive and TitleWave, pre-installed on 250 GB and 500 GB Glyph drives.
Sound Ideas (www.sound-ideas.com) hawked its Ultimate SFX Collection, which contains the complete Sound Ideas sound effect and production element product line in one big box—over 100 collections and 600 CDs of audio, fully digitized in broadcast .WAV format with embedded metadata, priced at $12,995. The collection is available for either Mac or PC, and comes packaged with the latest version of the Soundminer audio file management system.
 Fairlight's Pyxis nonlinear HD video playback and recording system. |
Fairlight (www.fairlightau.com) released version 2.0 software for its CC-1 (Crystal Core) Dream II platform, first introduced in 2006. Native processing functions are now performed in 36-bit resolution with zero latency. Merging Technologies (www.merging.com) introduced Pyramix 6.0 MassCore, a new software/hardware release that vastly increases the PC-based DAW’s track counts and support of multi-channel VST plug-ins. The company also rolled out V.6 Native, a software-only version aimed at small facilities and desktop/laptop users, as well as its new ADRenaline ADR recording and playback system, available as an option with Pyramix, with or without a dedicated controller. Zaxcom (www.zaxcom.com), winner of an Emmy Engineering Award for its pioneering DEVA field recording technology, showed the new Fusion lightweight, high-resolution, multi-track audio mixer and recorder.
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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