Pro Audio is Malarkey

Or: grousing for fun and profit.

The stereotype of sound guys is that they're lazy jerks. Just because that's true doesn't make it so, of course. But yeah.
One problem is the sheer amount of religion in sound. It's virtually impossible to do a real A/B comparison that's double-blind. But it can be done.
Firstwise is the infamous Sound On Sound preamp test where they could really do a double-blind listen to the same source. Remember this one? It's the one that showed that the cheap $300 ART tube mic preamp and the cheaper Mackie VLZ preamps to beat out Neve, API, and SSL. Yeah. That one.

Over at JWSound a poor user dared to test the Rode NT5 against the Schoeps MK41. Foolish mortal, he. (And don't get me started on how the nominal competence level of the production sound mixer is so far below average studio intern as to simply be embarrassing. I mean, they as a group have zero clue about what they're doing and the kind of audio they/we do is very simple. Not always easy, but always simple.)

And then there are these blind preamp tests.

I did a really un-scientific test of my three Oktava 012 mics with hypercardioid capsules.

You know something's up when the fear of a double-blind study is so great that people try to deliberately skunk the results.  Remember Ian Shepherd's test of humans vs LANDR and Aria machines?  (I know, it wasn't his test but he did work on it and I can't find any links to it now.) Well it turns out the "blind" listeners were super-affected by comments other people made. So the differences between man and machine weren't really all that significant (although they were there... we think.)

I have a notion that much of the actual differences in audio gear is that equipment has become on average vastly better than it used to be. A/D converters, for instance, are much better now than they used to be and that's true of mic preamps and analog signal paths as well as microphones themselves. I do have a great deal of difficulty caring about the difference between a U87 and a Rode NT1. I just... I don't care. An EQ will do whatever it is you need to an NT1 to make it a U87.
There's still differences between microphone types. So big-diaphragm multipattern mics have that big dry sound I like so much in live sound reinforcement (warning, danger, that is a radical opinion in and of itself, nobody else uses them that way.) And small diaphragm condensers will tend to sound the way they sound (very broadly speaking, I hate the off-axis nonsense of most all small-diaphragm other than Schoeps or Oktava, but I challenge you to distinguish in a recording which is which.)

Lost Faith

So I'm more than willing to admit that I'm going insane. I just need to put that out there, up-front and so on.
But I'm having a crisis of faith in preamps.

I have a pair of Neve 1272's (modified by Brent Averill.) I liked them better than the old 1073 I had (I know, let's just list this as apostasy #1). But although I've gotten some great guitar sounds with them, I've really started to prefer the Lindell preamps. So, I figure, maybe as I've gotten older I've been feeling more API than Neve. That's fine.

So the other night I was recording Russian Chamber Chorus with my Zoom F8 and I figured I would use Lindell preamps. Because, you know, more better, right?

No. No, not at all. There at the time I hated the sound of the Lindells on this ensemble. Hated.
Let's review. I have a custom ribbon microphone in the air above the conductor, and a pair of spaced Oktava 012's with hypercardioid capsules in the sweet spot in the audience where we get a "bloom" of the sound.

There's also a backup microphone on that stand with the ribbon. Oh, and the ribbon has a cloudlifter on it.

Now while I was recording it was immediately and imminently obvious that the Lindells were not as detailed and nice for this material. Counter-intuitively, however, when I got home I couldn't tell the difference between the Lindells and the internal preamps on the F8.
Which is odd because you'd expect that differences would be more apparent listening on Sennheiser HD 600's or my Blue Sky system. So why how what wut? How could something be so obvious in the field but not under more controlled conditions?
Well, on location I'm using lower impedance headphones -- Sennheiser HD 280's. And the F8 does not have the world's best headphone amp. So at first I thought that maybe the TRS line inputs took a different path for monitoring off the F8. That doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it's because of the phase relationship between the line inputs and the mic inputs and the actual sound which was bleeding into my headphones from the actual singers?
I have no idea.
But in either case, the F8's preamps are very tres excellent for classical music. Does this mean I should just get rid of the Lindells?
Well, maybe not. Maybe for rock and roll the API-like sound of the Lindells is better. What I noticed was there was less "air" and less detail. But for a fat blues guitar, that might be just the ticket. I don't know.
I do know, however, that the Neve's which I'm not using probably need to go to someone who will love and make records with them. Because I'm not.
So today I recorded RCCNY with a pair of ART Pro MPA II tube preamps. In the field I could not tell the difference between the ART's and the internal preamps to the F8. So I figured "At first, do no harm" and recorded the concert with the ART's.
Listening back to the rehearsals where I was switching between the ART's and the internals can I hear a difference? Uh. Maybe? It's not a big one. And it's certainly under the threshold of placebo effect. So I'm not super into lugging the ART around.
For classical music it seems that the internal preamps to the F8 are more than fine.

§

But wait. That's not all. 2.6kHz. It drives me nuts. Wait 'till next time.

Ideas for the Future

1. Pick 6 Pandora Machine movies and rewrite them into six 3-episode podcasts.

• Earthkiller
• Clonehunter (Naomi is the framing device, it's her story.)
• Millennium Crisis
• Day 2 Alien Uprising
• Pandora Machine 
• Robot Revolution

2. Rewrite OBE political thriller and shoot it as a Web series.

3. Do Cassandra Protocol

4. Do Android Insurrection II.

5. Do future noir with HMS. Maybe tell him about it first. Probably not.

Talkin' about armor.

Brian Schiavo found these great images.

Sound designing on a blog

This is what they've been using for the masque.

(OMG. Blogger just sucks. I put in all these embedded YouTube videos and when I publish, it just trashes the code. It's really infuriating.)

Alan Vista has some pretty excellent VSTi plugins including marimba and xylophone and cymbals.

Klanghelm makes a free version of their variable-mu limiter. It's a bit crankier to me than the Waves emulation of the Fairchild 670, but it's pretty nice.

Montclair State has a string quartet competition due on June 3, 2018. The prize is $2500. Anna Thorvaldsdottir is on the jury.

Batacuda:

Deportee:

St. James Infirmary

Animal Poems

So this is the first draft of the first movement of a horn concerto. I enjoy working in Sibelius. I do not enjoy the viola's C clef. Nor do I enjoy instruments which are written in other keys (although Sibelius makes up for this and lets me write the F horn in C so that it's less irksome to look at in the score.)
I think I'm not linking the themes together enough. And I don't modulate. I should probably modulate. I'm guessing that's one of my bigger failures as a classical composer.

Recording Chorus

I got to record the Nikolai Kachanov singers last weekend. They did two pieces -- an all-men's ensemble, and a piece for chorus and classical saxophone quartet.
The New Hudson Saxophone Quartet is really fantastic.
So we're at the Good Shepherd church (famous for Robert Shaw recordings, among others) and a couple things: there is a "bloom" of sound that starts at about the 5th pew. That's the sound the music director likes so I put a pair of spaced (about 2 meters) hypercardioid mics there as a stereo pair. Those are Oktava 012's.
But I also put up a center microphone. Well, I put up three.

Center cluster -- handmade ribbon mic, Oktava 012, handmade U-48 clone.

 I like to have appropriate mics ready because different pieces frequently must needs different setups. But also, I was experimenting with different sounds. So for the rehearsals I put up a cluster to listen to different sounds. I discovered that the ribbon just did some magical something. All the things everyone says about ribbon microphones? Yeah. Creamy yet beautiful and articulate high-end. Noisy, sure, but beautiful. I listened to an Oktava. I listened to the U48 clone. I listened to a Rode NT1-A. None of them did the "thing" the ribbon was doing.
The other thing about the ribbon is that it's inherently in a figure-8 pattern, which means it picks up sound behind as well as in front. So as a "close" microphone it sounds about twice as far away. So I put it close to the action. Almost right over the conductor's head.
But the sound of that mic was more like a couple meters away from the conductor. And it was being blended with the two mics behind it which were several meters behind.

But during the rehearsal for the men's ensemble (not pictured) I felt I had too much distance on the men and I wanted to place some large diaphragm condenser further downstage and pointed left and right.
So this is how it went on performance day: Ribbon mic in center. But I was a little worried about the delicate nature and ostensible crankiness of the ribbon, so I put an Oktava 012 up on that stand as a backup. And then I put the U48 clone up there in figure-8 mode but sideways, in anticipation of possibly doing a mid/side recording in the center cluster.
I also placed a pair of wide-spaced Rode NT1-A's just ahead of the first pew. The notion here was to better grab the men's ensemble.
Well, this is why we have options.
Nikolai told the group that the sound would dry up during performance because of people in the room. I looked at the room and thought "Well it can't dry up that much. The ceiling is like 15 miles away." But heck if I haven't recorded at this church a dozen times, yup. It dried up significantly down there on the floor.
What this meant was that the microphones at the 5th pew ended up being better than 50% of the stereo mix. And the ribbon just added a bit of prettiness and presence. The backup Oktava was not needed (thankfully). The U48 was also not doing anything for anybody. And the two Rode NT1-A's also didn't end up in the mix.
Seven mics in the air. Only three played.
The church has a bit of build-up at about 3kHz. Only once you get past a certain volume level. So back in the studio I put a bit of frequency-specific compression with a relatively narrow band at 3k.

There should be a new YouTube video of one or the other of these pieces. Asaf Blasberg was the videographer. Interestingly he also had a Zoom F8, so we jam-synced timecode to his F8, then he brought his F8 over to his camera (a 4K Panasonic) and jam-synced the camera. That way my files just blooped right over into his timeline. Kinda cool actually.


YouLean loudness meter. Oh boy. This is a nice loudness meter.

The Elephant's Dream

I'm learning Sibelius. And doing so I decided to write the world's worst string quartet. Here it is.

More and Thenwise

I am especially amused by Mail-A-Letter. Because, you know, you can mail a letter. On the Internet.

Brooklyn Shoe Space offers classes in making shoes and sneakers. I'm kinda academically interesting in the notion of DIY footwear.
Oneday had a Kickstarter for their sneaker kits.
University of Fashion is a paid site with lessons on drawing for fashion. I think the 9-head height is silly though.

The Residents

The show last night was all old hippies and the most beautiful 50-year-old women you've ever seen. It took place at a really nice venue with lots of leg room which was an active temple. The menorah on the side of the stage was a nice aesthetic touch.
So it was a big surprise when the band just stopped and said the neighbors complained about the noise and the cops were there. Concert over.
I'd never even been to a *party* shut down by the cops before.
The weird comic bit I think is just how mellow an audience this was. I mean, it's a San Fransisco band. And basically anyone under 35 was carded and told they needed better ID*
The costumes were great. I was expecting more costume changes but maybe those were going to happen later in the show? I enjoyed how the musicians sometimes had to adjust their beaks between songs. 

The singing was more Cookie-Monster than I'd expected. And the guitar was more '80's finger-tapping than I would have figured.
The backdrop matched the costumes. We met the tour's LD and I told him he did a great job. He told me he only had 8 instruments.
Almost exactly 37 years ago Pete Cenedella made me listen to the Residents in his dorm room at Solebury School. Which is kinda awesome.

*This is a lie but one that amuses me.

Katie Hannigan Podcast!

The wonderful and awesome Katie Hannigan has a new podcast: Apodcalypse.
Yeah.

Also, on iTunes.

Clone Hunter 2012 Movie Review - Analysis w/ Spoilers

This is a totally fair review of Clonehunter.

And yep. Those are Nerf guns.

The Girl With the Dragon Gifts On A Train.

So we have a movie where the lead is a black girl. This is a big freakin' deal. Sure, we've got a hard-ass British Army sergeant. But the army isn't made up of soldiers who are just insanely evil, like 28 Days Later. They're maybe not quite as realistic as Dog Soldiers but their incompetence is only minor.
Other than that we comfortably have a lot of women in speaking parts. And we have the lead played by a black girl.

The Girl With All The Gifts is a simply terrible name for a movie.
Would you think it is 
1. a delightful Christmas story 
2. a post-apocalyptic zombie movie 
3. a creepy Scandinavian murder mystery?

Exactly. And something more like this should have been the key art.

 We haveta haveta haveta start casting black women and Asian men as leads. And Native American and African and South Asian and... steer away from the brown-haired white boys the way we do.
Hey, sure, maybe not all at once. Let's cut 'em down to 50%. Try that for a while. Eventually we'll be at a nice 20% brown-haired white boys. That seems reasonable.

Diggs it

Groove to my neice's husband's Kickstarter for a dog crate.

Yeah.