The time has come, Gentle Reader, for another rant.

I spend a little time out there on the popular Internet newsgroups, chat rooms, and discussion boards, surfing and listening. I like to lay low and read, and just absorb what people are thinking and saying.

Sometimes, the arrogant audio wannabes rear their ugly heads, and start spouting pure balderdash. The wannabes fall into two camps, who I refer to as the C12s and the 57s.

The C12s are the esoteric gear sluts. These are the guys that claim that everything digital sucks. Except maybe 24 bit recordings made at 192 KHz. Everything solid state sucks - all amplification must be provided by vacuum tubes. Pro Tools really sucks. The only good mics to use for vocals are vintage U67s and C12s, and actually, only certain runs of serial numbers within these products. All mixes should sum to mono. You can't get a good recording unless the room you're in has at least a 16 foot ceiling with at least one room dimension in excess ... Read More »

You won't see software publishers talk about it in their glossy product brochures or on their web sites. I've never seen it listed in an advertisement, and it is rarely mentioned in magazine product reviews. It affects almost everyone who buys software, yet vendors go to great lengths to avoid talking about it. I'm referring, of course, to software copy protection, the audio industry's dirty little secret. Traditionally, copy protection has been more of a burden for Mac than PC users, but I am greatly disturbed by the recent trend of PC programs to start using copy protection too. Let me state up front that I am vigorously opposed to software piracy, and my objections to copy protection are based solely on its negative impact for legitimate users.

Copy protection comes in many forms, and is an attempt by manufacturers to limit the use of their software to people who actually buy it. The simplest form of protection requires you to enter a serial number when the program is first installed. In practi ... Read More »

I was fortunate to receive a matched pair of Crown CM-700s for review almost two months ago. I have spent the better part of those months making extensive use of these microphones, and I am happy to report that we have a serious more-for-less contender in these mics.

Robin Hood Brians is a true Texas character. His studio, Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas has been kicking out some of the great music of the last half-century, and has seen countless changes since its inception in 1963.

Over the years Robin has become a kind of folk hero in Tyler, a modest celebrity whose claim to fame to some of the more non-musical locals is that he has a pizza named after him. If you've never heard of Robin Hood, that's probably because, like any good Texas boy, he's not one for tooting his own horn. He never left Tyler for Nashville, LA, or New York; preferring to remain in his home town and just make music. But Robin has left a mark on music, and is a wealth of history, insights, techniques, and down-home storytelling.

Robin Hood Brians

OK, what could be worse than this?

It's 3 p.m., and I'm sitting in a crammed-to-capacity MD80 on a-the runway at DFW Airport. The Dallas sun is beating harshly on our little airbus, which should already be jetting towards Washington DC. Instead, I'm grounded for an undetermined wait. It's hot, and the plane is losing its delightful freshness by the second. They've locked the booze cabinets and posted guards. The pilot is laughing over the PA, saying that the tower has no information but there are about a hundred airplanes ahead of ours. The tower says one might be able to leave every three minutes. I don't do math, but this does not sound good to me at all.

Screw it, I'm entertaining myself thinking about Vegas. No, not that one. I'm talking about Vegas Pro, Sonic Foundry's entry into the professional multitrack market.

Vegas Unvelied

I'm no technophobe. But, I don't like taking unnecessary chances.

Hey, I've been working with computers for 20 years now. I've learned my lessons the hard way. Like waiting for the first maintenance release before upgrading to a new version of ANY software. And letting a few people try something new before jumping in myself.

There's a reason they call it the "bleeding edge." You can get bled to death with new technology. It's a slow, painful death.

So I waited around until a few people had built their own PC DAWs before taking the plunge myself with an overclocked Celeron 300A and fast UDMA hard disks.

I've been really happy with my Celeron system. I get a solid 24 track playback, with a good amount of real time compression, EQ, reverb, and effects throw in. It's a great system, and I giggle when I realize that I only spent a little more on it than a lot of people spent on their Minidisc ... Read More »

The Internet is exploding with music. Currently, MP3 formatted audio is the most popular Internet attraction, offering high-fidelity digital audio at 1/12th the file size of a standard 16/44.1 stereo digital file. As Internet bandwidth grows, we will also have the option of quickly downloading 16/44.1 uncompressed audio.

There is a misconception that the Internet is going to usher in the New Age of free music for all. Any song you want to hear will become free for the listening. There are even other, more misinformed people who point to FM radio and say, "see, music is already free on the radio - MP3 just gives us better-sounding free music." Ridiculous. Music on FM isn't free. You have to pay for it. You pay by listening to advertisements and buying products. Money flows from you to advertisers to radio stations to publishing companies and eventually to artists.

Others point to the record labels who are the chief beneficiaries of the current system and remark th ... Read More »

There is a great movie from the late 1970s called "One Trick Pony." It stars Paul Simon as a folk singer/songwriter (a real acting stretch for Mr. Simon) trying to get back onto the charts. It follows his trials and tribulations, and we suffer along with him, as the producers and record labels turn his wonderful little song into a disco nightmare. There is a terrific final scene where a roll of 2-inch tape is being unwound down the streets of Manhattan.

This movie should be required viewing for all of us who ever sit in the producer's chair. It shows that the best thing you can do for a client is work with them, not against them.

I suppose this could be a pretty gutsy article, after all, I may have to fess up to mistakes of my past. I freely admit to making a few, only because I have learned from them. Thus, I feel I may be able to share the knowledge of my mistakes in the hopes that those up-and-coming producers out there will not be doomed to repeating them.

Pre-Producti ... Read More »

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Bob Lichty

Welcome back to the ProRec Roundtable, the quarterly convention of the ProRec Collective Consciousness. This summer, we have Joel Braverman, Lionel Dumond, Pete Leoni, Bob Lichty, Ted Perlman, Rip Rowan, and Garry Simmons. OK, guys, gloves off. Here comes the topic:

Currently the consumer audio market is being pulled from two directions. The pro audio manufacturers have released Digital Versatile Disc - DVD - capable of better-than-CD-quality 24 bits @ 96 KHz sampling rate. On the other hand, the Internet has given us the less-than-CD-quality MP3 compressed audio format.Over the last year we have seen an explosi ... Read More »

Despite my glowing, youthful appearance, I harbor an ever increasing affinity for what can only be deemed, "old-school ways."

You see, because of the way I tend to work on projects (lay down click tracks and sequences in one place, do tracking at one place, overdubs at a few more places, mix elsewhere), I'm still one of those holdouts with some ADATs and that ancient beast, a mixing console. Yes, while many of my comrades are marching into battle armed with "SCSIs, plug-ins, HUIs, GUIs and LOUIEs," I still love my buttons and knobs and the familiar whir of the tape transport.

So, when the age of the affordable digital console dawned, I was excited. I mean, I may be old school, but I certainly realize the benefits of a good digital console.

The problem is, in these early digital boards, the word "good" just wasn't easily included in the description. These early desks were, shall we say, "engineering driven." Some guys in lab coats in the back rooms of Big Audio Conglomerate, I ... Read More »

When I first started paying attention to digital audio, the popular soundcards were the Turtle Beach Multisound and the DAL CardD+. Stereo analog ins and outs were the order of the day. Then the digital I/O cards arrived, and you could get various combinations of analog and digital (S/PDIF or AES/EBU) ins and outs on a card. Life wasn't too bad on the PC-DAW frontier.

Now, not that many years later, we have a bewildering number of soundcard choices. Multi-IO cards featuring eight or more ins and outs of various flavors of analog and/or several digital formats (Lightpipe and TDIF), plus all kinds of new sync options and converter options are available. Most of these multi-IO cards are powered by a DSP of some sort. The soundcard usually comes with a mixer applet gives the user varying levels of control over the signal levels and routing. Many users have wished for the ability to use any leftover DSP power to do audio processing for them, so that they could lessen the load on their host CPU. W ... Read More »

Hey, if you've been coveting those groovy VST plugins floating around the web for free, but have a DirectX-only digital audio workstation, it's time for you to get happy. Amulet Audio Software, a UK-based software company, has released VST Adapter, a DirectX shell for VST plugins.

VST Adapter is great news for the musician on a budget. There are dozens of totally free VST plugins on the web that can be yours for the price of clicking a few links.

There's one minor catch: those plugins are free, but the VST Adapter is not. Price of admission is fifty bucks. Still, it's a pretty sweet deal. For the price of one cheap DirectX plugin, you get the dozens of freeware VST plugins that are out there already. New ones appear all the time. Some even come from Steinberg, including a very cool autopanner. Free.
.

VST Adapter running in Sound ... Read More »

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Bruce Richardson

I recently came across a line of posts regarding ProRec in a popular discussion group.

The gist of the commentary was that ProRec is an interesting 'Zine, but it sure seemed like ProRec's authors were lackeys for certain pro audio companies. The author asked, could someone please recommend a trustworthy web site?

My blood boiled. TRUSTWORTHY?!!?

I wanted to flame the living shit out of the scumbag.

Then came our Roundtable on the future of the small studio business. That one stirred up a lot of misplaced emotion in various discussion forums. A lot of readers got the idea that ProRec was staffed by a bunch of "old timers" who desperately clung to their cushy big-studio jobs and who had a terrifying fear of competition from home recordists.

Yeah, right.

Later, as I calmed down, I started to realize that the people in these discussion groups just didn't understand m ... Read More »

Most businesses these days are run with computers, marketing, and money. Even in the world of pro audio.

Therefore it's always refreshing when I find a company which is run by brains, engineering, and passion.Especially in the world of pro audio.

I was introduced to Brauner microphones by Brad Lunde of Transamerica Audio Group. Brad had heard about ProRec at an AES show and wondered if ProRec would be interested in hearing the Brauner microphone.

I was a little skeptical. Here at ProRec we're interested in the cutting edge of recording equipment. My concept of Brauner was that of a company that built new versions of classic microphone designs. So, where's the story?

I decided to audition a VM1 microphone, if only to justify my skepticism.

Overview

Drum-roll please…

Gadget Labs (http://www.gadgetlabs.com) redefined the standard of "More-for-Less" with their rock-solid Wave/4, so we've ALL been waiting for the scoop on this piece of gear. A 24-bit audio card with eight channels of balanced +4 analog I/O, built-in MIDI… and a MSRP of $499!

Ladies and Gentlemen: I welcome you to the Overview/Review of Gadget Labs' Wave/8*24.

Features

Probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of audio science is that of the decibel -- what it means, and what it doesn't mean. This really isn't very surprising. Most books you'll find on audio production gloss over the subject, offering a rudimentary explanation at best. What's worse, you'll often see the term "dB" bandied about with little consideration given to the context in which it's being used -- are they talking dBu, dbV, dBm, dbVU, dBFS, dBspl, or what? And being a rather complex concept, the term doesn't lend itself well to a one or two sentence glossary-style entry. For example, if you look up "decibel" in a book, you might read something like "the smallest increment of sound which the human ear can detect" -- which only happens to be true in general, but certainly isn't an accurate definition by any means.

What's more, this lack of understanding isn't limited to beginners. There are folks I know who've worked in this field for a long time who aren't clear on the ... Read More »

The landscape of Marketing History is littered with ill-fated products, saddled by their well-meaning creators with monikers meant to cash in on the glittering reputation of their legendary namesakes. As we've all learned, however, sharing a name with a classic isn't necessarily an indication of repeated glory. Remember the Mustang II? The Exorcist II? Or, God forbid... New Coke?

The lesson learned here is that, if you're going to adopt a name synonymous with Greatness, that you'd better be able to walk your talk. The pressure to excel, to succeed, to live up to heightened expectations is tremendous. Many have tried. Many have failed. Few are up to the task. But every so often, these untested heroes with the oh-so-familiar names surprise, delight, and even astound us. It can be done. Just ask Ken Grffey, Jr.

Or, for that matter, ask the developers at Waves Ltd., who are calling their latest bundle the "Native Power Pack II." Whoa... wait just a minute here! Heck, we a ... Read More »

I can hear it now.

"What do you wanna do tonight honey?"

"I dunno. What do you wanna do?"

"Why don't we design the best compressor in the world for under $1500?"

"OK, dear. That sounds like fun"

Not your ordinary domestic conversation, but the couple who designed and market the RNC (for Really Nice Compressor) aren't your ordinary couple. They are of course, both electronics engineers. Unsatisfied with the way that most compressors sounded, and in need of a high-quality compressor themselves, they simply designed their own unit.

Well, one thing led to another and before long word got around that something special was happening in a little shop in Austin Texas. FMR Audio was born.

Don't like to shop around and compare? Need a compressor? Don't have about two grand or so to spend?

Save yourself some time and don't even bother to look at any thing else. This has got to be the all around best sounding compressor at anywhere n ... Read More »

The forces of life were against my trip to the Namm show this time. Everything conspired against me, but I did make it down for one day, and I took a bunch of pictures with a borrowed Sony DV Camcorder. (Techie corner - they were digitally transferred to an AVID and the stills were extracted from there). I've provided a little information on the stuff I saw that I liked, and some links to the respective companies if the products sound interesting to you.

Down in the Basement

I've been looking wistfully at the new generation of DSP-enabled audio cards. In particular the ability to run several bands of real-time EQ and compression on every channel is SO exciting.

So you can imagine my surprise - and glee - when I stumbled across a demo download on the Waves site (http://www.waves.com) called AudioTrack and loaded it onto my computer.

AudioTrack is the essential track insert. It is a self-contained DirectX processor that incorporates a 4-band paragraphic EQ, a compressor, and a noise gate in a single plugin.

Waves AudioTrack