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Pro Sound News Online Index: March 2021

Posted on by Katie Makal

on the cover

Worshiping Together While Apart, by Mary Bakija

Houses of worship are using a variety of pro audio technologies for in-person services, livestreaming, recording and more to bring their messages of faith to the masses. Manufacturers have responded by creating the advanced yet accessible tools they need. How has COVID changed HOWs’ adoption of tech, and what will happen in the wake of the pandemic?

Download the March 2021 Issue of Pro Sound News

Pro Audio Legend Rupert Neve Passes at 94, by Clive Young
Legendary designer Rupert Neve died Feb. 12, leaving behind a monumental legacy of equipment used in every corner of pro audio.

Elliot Mazer, Noted Producer/Engineer, Dead at 79, by Clive Young
Legendary producer/engineer Elliot Mazer, best known for his work with Neil Young, Janis Joplin and others, died of a heart attack in his San Francisco home on Feb 7.

Shure Petitions FCC for Dedicated Wireless Mic Channel
Shure has petitioned the FCC to ensure a dedicated “vacant” 6 MHz UHF channel is available in each market for wireless microphone use.

Sweetwater Revenues Roll Past $1 Billion, by Steve Harvey
In 2020, Sweetwater served more than 1.5 million customers, taking annual revenues past $1 billion for the first time in the company’s 42-year history.

Meyer Moves Into Warsaw’s ROMA
A mainstay of Warsaw’s live music and theater scene, Teatr Muzyczny ROMA has netted a new Meyer Sound LINA system.

Ortofon, Phonocut Team for Vinyl Recorder
Danish turntable cartridge company Ortofon has teamed up with startup Phonocut on the development of the latter’s vinyl recorder.

Turtle Beach Acquires Neat Microphones
Gaming accessory company Turtle Beach takes aim at the microphone and podcast markets by netting Neat.

Native Instruments Nets New Partners
A majority of shares in Native Instruments have been purchased by tech investment firm Francisco Partners.

Bryston Acquired by Management, Colquhoun Audio
Audio electronics and loudspeaker manufacturer Bryston has been acquired by longtime VP James Tanner in partnership with Colquhoun Audio.

The Wonderly of It All, by Steve Harvey
You’ve heard the work of alt-folk/soundtrack mavens Wonderly; now the duo is releasing two collections about the “Pacific Northweird.”

Studio Showcase: San Juan Sound Supports Diverse Local Scene, by Steve Harvey
Matteo Burr, drummer and founding member of Grace Potter and The Nocturnals, fell in love with San Juan, Puerto Rico, and before long, he envisioned opening a new recording facility to support the diverse local scene. Three years, two hurricanes and 50 guitars later, it’s happened.

Iron Mountain Expands Music Archiving Services, by Steve Harvey
There’s more to modern music archiving than preserving tapes, as IMES’s Rory Kaplan explains.

Tracks – March 2021
Tracks is a monthly look at the recording process behind five new releases by artists across the musical spectrum.

New Record Adds New SSL
Rubin Nizriis positioning his New Record Studios facility for the next stage in its growth with the installation of a 32-channel Solid State Logic Origin analog in-line mixing console.

Smith Builds Out with Neve
Cuban-American recording artist Mike Smith, who is also a co-executive producer and main judge on BET’s One Shot competition series, recently overhauled his studio in Charlotte, NC, and installed a Neve 8424 console.

Recording Takes Queen’s Gambit
Sound mixer Roland Winke’s recording rig helped immerse viewers in the world of chess for the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit.

Rivera Talks Collaboration, by Steve Harvey
The Queen’s Gambit composer Carlos Rafael Rivera’s first musical collaboration with Scott Frank was teaching the writer/director how to play guitar.

Top Cinema Sound Teams Talk Up Audio Efforts, by Steve Harvey
Audio pros behind the films Mank, Sound of Metal, and Judas and the Black Messiah share how they answered the challenges of their productions.

Rarified Heir Prepares, by Jim Beaugez
With season one of the burgeoning podcast recorded pre-pandemic, Rarified Heir faces a major workflow challenge for season two.

Drop Ship Audio Adds Calrec
A Calrec Artemis Beam console is being used on a popular reality show in its fourth season, installed in a studio with a major U.S. network.

Shure Unmasked on Fox
Panelists are sporting Shure headset microphones on the Fox TV series The Masked Dancer and The Masked Singer.

Endless Noise Library Launches
Music and sound design company Endless Noise has launched the Endless Noise Music Library with a strategic partnership with SoundCloud to provide a uniquely curated compilation of artists from their vast platform.

Festival Returns for Summer Down Under
South Australia’s Summer Sounds Festival presented 18 shows over four weeks for 2,100 fans each night, all the while meeting pandemic protocols.

Cornerstone Church Reaches Out
Cornerstone Church recently upgraded its sound reinforcement system with a new audio system based around loudspeakers from DAS Audio

Packing the House with P.A.
To retain the sense of aural intimacy brought on by livestreaming services, the House is ready for congregants to return, having added a new Adamson P.A.

Good Shepherd Rounds Up New Gear
Good Shepherd Church in Bokjeong-dong, South Korea, recently added an Allen & Heath Avantis console and ME-1 mixers to its audio setup.

VUE on the Move
VUE Audiotechnik has made a number of major organizational changes under owner Michael von Keitz with the turn of the year.

Stillery Stuck on EAW
The Stillery, a restaurant/venue in Chandler, AZ, is sporting an EAW RSX P.A. system paired with a Midas M32 digital console.

Real-World Review: Repairing Spoken-Word Recordings with iZotope RX 8 Advanced, by Rob Tavaglione
Producer/engineer Rob Tavaglione explains how he repairs spoken-word recordings with iZotope Rx 8 Advanced in this real-world review.

Real-World Review: SSL VHD 500 Series Microphone Preamp, by Rob Tavaglione
PSN put the VHD 500 Series Microphone Preamp through the paces and found it provides users with an affordable way to achieve that classic SSL sound.

Innovations: Audix TM2 Integrated Acoustic Coupler for In-Ear Monitors, by Carl Sundberg
Audix’s Carl Sundberg explains how the new Audix TM2 can help engineers test IEM performance on the road without using lab gear.

Studio Products

Sound Reinforcement Products

From the Editor: Getting Ready for “Normal” to Return, by Clive Young

(The METAlliance Report) Ed Cherney: Recalling an Engineering Great, by Steve Harvey
As the late engineer Ed Cherney is honored by the Grammys this weekend with a posthumous Trustee Award, his fellow METAlliance members look back with fondness at their friend’s legacy.

The Mix Consultancy: The Four (and a Half) Jobs in a Studio, by Dom Morley
Grammy Award-winner Dom Morley takes us through the variety of jobs in a modern studio and the responsibilities they entail.

Sounding Board: How to Network Effectively Without Audio Trade Shows, by Mike Dias
Real networking opportunities happen every day, all year, independent of time, space or location. Here’s how you can make them happen for you.

View from the Top: Richard Factor, Eventide Audio, by Tamara Starr
Richard Factor, Eventide Audio co-founder and board chairman, describes the push for diversification and the sense of individual responsibility at the company that keeps progress on track.

People: Hires and Promotions in the Audio Industry for March 2021
Industry moves this month include promotions and hires at PK Sound, Empirical Labs, Dirac, ULTRASONE, Digigram, Audix, Renkus-Heinz, and the Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA).

60 Seconds with Michael Palmer, Eastern Acoustic Works
Get to know Michael Palmer, director of U.S. sales at Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW).

Music Etc. – Jim Keller, By No Means, by Steve Harvey
Jim Keller’s latest album, By No Means, is his first solo project in seven years, but the co-founder of power-pop band Tommy Tutone has not been slacking.

 

 

World News

Music Etc: Jim Keller on ‘By No Means’

Posted on by Steve Harvey
Jim Keller
Jim Keller

It’s been seven years since Jim Keller, co-founder of power-pop band Tommy Tutone and co-writer of the 1982 Top 5 hit “867-5309/Jenny,” released a solo album. But he hasn’t been slacking. He somehow found the time to manage the career of composer Philip Glass and also front regular jam sessions—before COVID-19, anyway—with a rotating cast of 25 or more musicians in Brooklyn.

Keller quit Tommy Tutone in the early 1980s, working on a variety of musical projects for the next 10 years before snagging the Glass gig. Another decade passed before he returned to writing and performing, going on to release several albums of rootsy folk rock.

Keller’s latest, By No Means, released Feb. 12, was co-written with longtime collaborator Byron Isaacs and produced by Mitchell Froom, who recorded it at his home studio, pre-pandemic, with engineer and co-producer David Boucher. It features guitarist David Hidalgo, bassist Bob Glaub and drummer Michael Urbano, with Froom on keyboards.

On the phone from Brooklyn, Keller gave PSN the lowdown on his new album.

Jim Keller "By No Means" album cover
Click to stream “By No Means”

On Working with Philip Glass

Post-’80s, I was a “where are they now” story. I wasn’t strong enough as a solo artist to get a record deal. I had moved back to New York and was completely broke. I talked my way into an interview with Philip and his manager, producer and lawyer. According to Philip, I said, “I’ll work for nothing. If it works out, you can start paying me. What have you got to lose?” Somehow I managed to get the idea across that I might be able to help him, and we’ve been partners in this thing for over 25 years.

On Working with Mitchell Froom

I knew so many of his projects. We became friends, and when I was starting to think about doing another record, I sent him a note. I sent him 35 songs, many done on my iPhone, which is how I write. Because it’s just me and my acoustic guitar, sitting in this chair in my place in Brooklyn, it’s very low and very intimate. That was the stuff he loved.

There was a process we went through of getting down to what really worked with my voice that I could get across in this way, with me on acoustic guitar. We narrowed it down to a group of songs, then figured out how we wanted to record, which was to base all of it off of whatever rhythm was generating off my thumb on the guitar, and my voice. That meant finding players who were simpatico.


“Find My Shadow” from the album By No Means

On Finding the Band

I always record with a band in a room; this was a quieter version of that. It helps when you have really talented people. I’ve been in sessions where something isn’t right. How do you make a groove if you’re playing quietly? If you come from the rock world, it’s a little different. When you’re with people who really know how to do that stuff well, it makes a huge difference.

At my gigs, I’ll often have two keyboard players—because I can, and it’s fun! But there are songs where Mitchell plays five notes on the keyboard. There were moments when I said, “That’s it?” It’s very naked, and as a singer, there’s no one to hide behind, which is a challenge I loved.

Chuck Prophet, The Land That Time Forgot

On the Sound of the Album

We recorded the songs at Mitchell’s place over the course of five days. The vocals are live, and the record is really simple. His studio is very small. The drums were in an iso room. The guitar amp and the bass amp were in the bathroom. I was sitting behind the piano, because there was nowhere else to sit. As soon as I sat down, I was able to hear myself in a way that allowed me to sing that way. We didn’t have to experiment. It’s what Mitchell was going for and I was thrilled to follow. Whatever is happening sonically is because David Boucher—who is not to be underestimated—and Mitchell know that room so well and are really good, in terms of their choices and how they position stuff and set it up.

Jim Keller • www.jimkellermusic.com

World News

Rivera Talks Collaboration for Composing ‘Queen’s Gambit’

Posted on by Steve Harvey
Carlos Rafael Rivera
Composer Carlos Rafael Rivera collaborated extensively with writer and director Scott Frank for “The Queen’s Gambit.”

Miami, FL—Award-winning composer Carlos Rafael Rivera’s favorite sequence in writer and director Scott Frank’s The Queen’s Gambit has nothing to do with any music that he wrote. Rather, it was an example of the collaborative process that begins when he first reads the screenplay.

“The way I work with Scott is very unorthodox,” Rivera told the audience during a recent PMA Academy webcast. “I work with him from the screenplay. I start writing music reacting to it.

”Frank had already written Minority Report and Get Shorty when Rivera started giving him guitar lessons. Frank was studying composition at USC’s Thornton School, where he was mentored by Randy Newman. Eventually they started working together, first on 2014’s A Walk Among the Tombstones, then on Netflix’s 2017 series Godless, for which Rivera won an Emmy Award for the main titles theme music.

“I make an iMovie out of the screenplay, then I score that,” said Rivera of his creative process. “What I’ve learned in being involved with the process early on is that 30 percent of the music survives. The rest goes away, because it doesn’t work.”

"The Queen's Gambit" album art
Listen to Rivera’s score for “The Queen’s Gambit.”

His favorite sequence in The Queen’s Gambit, he said, is the end of episode 1, where the 1953 film The Robe is playing in the background. “I thought of having this movie being heard in the background, and the score in the background becomes diegetic—it informs the action. I was able to suggest something the director liked so much that he shot it with the idea of syncing it to Alfred Newman’s score.”

When writing his own scores, Rivera uses Native Instruments’ Kontakt and Komplete, he said, but he has also been using Spitfire Audio libraries such as Albion Tundra. “It helped me on Godless,” he said.

Some composers buy lots of libraries. “I get one thing—because until recently I couldn’t afford these things—and work my way through it,” said Rivera, whose day job is teaching at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. “I like the idea of consuming one library and then moving on to another.”

Related stories:
• Supervising sound editor and sound designer Wylie Stateman discusses his work on The Queen’s Gambit
• Sound mixer Roland Winke talks about recording The Queen’s Gambit

But he always incorporates a few live musicians to “sell” his demos, he said. “I record them and blend them with the libraries.” The idea is to ultimately record the score with an orchestra in Budapest, Hungary. For The Queen’s Gambit, he said, “The session dates started the day after Hungary lifted the quarantine on musicians. We were very lucky. But we were prepared to have it in-the-box.”

Carlos Rafael Rivera • www.carlosrafaelrivera.com

World News

People: Hires and Promotions in the Audio Industry for March 2021

Posted on by ProSoundNetwork Editorial Staff
James Oliver
James Oliver

PK Sound

PK Sound has appointed James Oliver as chief strategy officer. Reporting directly to founder and CEO Jeremy Bridge, Oliver is responsible for the development, communication, execution and maintenance of strategic corporate initiatives. In addition to his role on PK Sound’s senior management team, he has also joined the company’s ownership group. Oliver spent the previous seven years with Adamson Systems Engineering, most recently as director of marketing and sales, where he spearheaded the development of turnkey system offerings and a global distribution network.

Matt Ward
Matt Ward

Empirical Labs

Empirical Labs has brought on Matt Ward as strategic advisor. Ward has held top management positions including CEO of Plugin Alliance and president of Universal Audio. He first collaborated with Empirical Labs founder Dave Derr in 2006 to bring a Fatso software emulation to the UAD platform. “In the few short months we have worked together, we put a new business plan in place, hired several employees, and increased our hardware production and software sales to meet a surging demand, largely resulting from Matt driving product and brand awareness with our online marketing team,” said Derr.

Peter Friedrichsen
Peter Friedrichsen

Dirac

Swedish digital audio pioneer Dirac has hired Peter Friedrichsen as chief executive officer following the decision by longtime CEO and co-founder Mathias Johansson to become chief product officer. Friedrichsen previously served as CEO of myFC, Bergenstråhle Group, TAC Svenska and MaxMove Group, among others. He has a background working in scale-ups, with experience across a broad range of industries. His resume includes past work in the vehicle industry, with Scania, and licensing businesses, having led the IP consultancy company Bergenstråhle & Partners.

Robert Winterhoff
Robert Winterhoff

ULTRASONE

Robert Winterhoff has joined the management board of ULTRASONE. He will take over the marketing and sales division as COO of the Bavarian headphone manufacturer and audio specialist. Winterhoff has held executive positions within the professional and consumer lifestyle sectors with brands such as Harman, Behringer, beyerdynamic and Crystal Connect/Siltech. In his new position, Winterhoff will focus particularly on implementing the company’s digital strategy and positioning its brand.

Digigram

From left, Florence Marchal, Nancy Diaz and Curiel Xavier Allanic
From left, Florence Marchal, Nancy Diaz and Curiel Xavier Allanic

French audio equipment manufacturer Digigram has appointed a new management team, as three company senior executives are stepping up as directors. Florence Marchal has been named director of finance, human resources and legal affairs. A senior Digigram staff member, Marchal joined Digigram in 2000 and became the company’s CFO. Meanwhile, Nancy Diaz Curiel has become the director of sales, marketing and communications. Since 2010, Singapore-based Curiel has overseen Asian & Pacific operations, including products distribution. While remaining in Singapore, her new role will include the supervision of teams and projects worldwide. Additionally, Xavier Allanic, Digigram’s vice president sales EMEA and Americas since 2018, has stepped up as director of operations, a role in which he will oversee the company’s general operations and supervise R&D projects, as well as customer support and manufacturing. Jérémie Weber, company CEO since 2017, remains chairman of Digigram Group.

Dave Garlett
Dave Garlett

Audix

Audix has appointed Dave Garlett as its key account manager and consultant liaison. Garlett recently departed from The Farm AV, an audiovisual solutions industry factory representative firm. Prior to The Farm, Garlett served in various management roles within the systems integration industry, as well as at manufacturers such as Lightspeed Technologies and Carver Professional.

Renkus-Heinz

From left, Dudley McLaughlin and Garrison Parkin
From left, Dudley McLaughlin and Garrison Parkin

Renkus-Heinz has appointed Dudley McLaughlin national sales manager and Garrison Parkin western regional sales manager. The positions both cover the North American region. McLaughlin has been with Renkus-Heinz since he was hired as western regional sales manager in 2018, while Parkin joined the company in 2019 as southwestern territory sales manager.

Chris Regan
Chris Regan

Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance

The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance announced that Chris Regan has become chair of PAMA’s Board of Directors for a two-year term. Selected by the PAMA directors as chair-elect in 2018, Regan succeeds Greg Beebe (Sennheiser) as chair. Beebe remains on the PAMA Board as a director, and Karam Kaul (Harman) has succeeded Regan as chair-elect. Regan is a 15-year veteran audio professional whose resume includes serving on the founding team at Crowley and Tripp Microphones as product manager; as vice president of sales and operations, North America, for Audio Processing Technology; and his current position as co-founder and president of PAMA member company RF Venue, a developer and manufacturer of antenna and RF products for wireless microphones and in-ear monitor systems.

World News

View from the Top: Richard Factor, Eventide Audio

Posted on by PSN Staff
Richard Factor, Eventide Audio founder
Richard Factor, Eventide Audio founder

“My first love and original career was in broadcasting, at a time when broadcasting was as ‘professional’ as audio could get,” said Richard Factor, Eventide Audio co-founder and board chairman. Factor recalled the “privilege” of working at powerhouse New York radio station WABC, where he sat across from legendary DJs and also repaired—and even built—equipment for the station.

Moving on to defense contractor Federal Scientific Corp., Factor said he “got a good grounding in digital technology and some of the new integrated circuits that were just coming into use. While I was there, my friend and Eventide co-founder Stephen Katz asked me to build a piece of equipment—a tape search controller—for his studio’s Ampex MM1000 [2-inch, 16-track master recorder]. He was able to sell it to Ampex on an OEM basis, which became the start of our original business.”

Factor credits a “love of music and growing up nerd” as the motivation to focus primarily on audio technology. He recalled being involved in every phase of operations by necessity in the early days. “I would open the mail in the morning and pay invoices so that our vendors would trust us. Then I would unlimber my soldering iron and oscilloscope, and design or test hardware until I heard the call of the light table and lay out printed circuit boards until I had to sleep. Over the decades, we hired people who were ever so much better at pretty much everything than I was, and we turned into a serious company with departments and even, latterly, divisions. But,” he said in homage to early PCB layout techniques, “I’m still the blue-and-red-tape Mylar king!

“We’re extremely concentrated in the R&D department,” said Factor. That’s no surprise given the pace of Eventide’s release of new products: “Now we have far more software composers than hardware designers.” On the marketing side of the equation, he said, “We’ve also laid on quite the crowd of social media denizens. We’ll probably have a celebration when the oldest of them becomes half my age. They speak internet and video and have been turning out some remarkably effective tutorials, advertising and blog posts, while accumulating something called ‘likes.’

[ Related: Eventide managing director and co-owner Tony Agnello recounts the colorful history of the company flagship digital multi-effects processors. ]

“Our culture, from the very beginning, was and remains one of individual responsibility. We have, by preference and necessity, very little of what other companies might call ‘management.’ My partner Tony Agnello, who is running the company, hires the best people and trusts them to get things done. I have heard him say ‘never settle’ more times than our first shift-register delay lines could repeat a loop.”

Eventide products are prototyped and manufactured out of two large plants in Little Ferry, NJ. “They are converted warehouses,” said Factor, “one of which sports hundreds of kilowatts of solar panels to feed our electric habit.” These days, “while Tony does a spectacular job of keeping everything together back in New Jersey, I devote what’s left of my attention span to propounding what I believe are Good Ideas while enjoying living in Sedona [AZ], where winter is mostly pretend,” Factor added.

Professional audio and public safety communications are currently Eventide’s biggest markets, according to Factor, with his first love, broadcasting, “sadly decreasing.” Meanwhile, the home recording aspects of Eventide’s business continue to grow, helping feed the new streaming distribution methodology.

[ Eventide Spring Plug-In Review, Eventide H3000 Factory Plug-In Review ]

In the early days of a tiny, fledgling audio industry, Factor would agonize over every new product release from competing companies and “worry about how that would affect my chocolate fund,” he said. Numerous TEC Awards and induction into the TEC Hall of Fame, a NAMM Milestone Award and a Technical Grammy Award are evidence that Factor and his team got it right. Today, he said, “we deal with the competition with some combination of bemusement and inspiration. Sticking with our ‘Make Neat Stuff’ philosophy seems to work pretty well, but, borrowing an expression from SETI, ‘We know we’re not alone.’”

“Diversification” is Factor’s one-word explanation of Eventide’s longevity. “Although it’s our 50th anniversary in the professional audio world, less well known is that we spent about 30 years manufacturing computer peripherals, including the world’s first in-computer test instrumentation,” he said. “Another business for us was making the first successful moving map display for general aviation aircraft.” In the late 1980s, Eventide was the first company to use computer hardware to replace tape recording for surveillance. “Our communications division is as well known as the Dictaphone of yore,” Factor said, “and our products are used everywhere from airports to zoos. These seemingly unrelated businesses supplemented and regularized our revenue. I admit that we got into each of them serendipitously, but as you can see, it’s worked out OK!”

Eventide • www.eventideaudio.com

World News

60 Seconds with Michael Palmer of Eastern Acoustic Works

Posted on by ProSoundNetwork Editorial Staff
Michael Palmer, Eastern Acoustic Works
Michael Palmer

What is your new position, and what does it entail?

I am director of U.S. sales for Eastern Acoustic Works (EAW) and also oversee the distribution of dB Technologies in the United States. This includes overseeing all aspects of sales throughout the United States and managing the day-to-day sales operations. I also work closely with our manufacturer’s sales reps and regional sales managers.

How has your background prepared you for your new role?

I’ve been in the industry for over 25 years, and my background includes previous positions at Allen & Heath and L-Acoustics. I have established many long-term relationships and have a great understanding of not only the distribution model, but also the live sound, production and integration markets.

What new marketing initiatives are we likely to see from the company?

We are going to expand and focus on online education and training with the launch of EAW University, which is our online training channel, www.education.eaw.com. We’re also looking at further expansion of our product offerings in order to adhere to the changes that venues are facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our ADAPTive line can cater to a range of situations, from large-scale events all the way down to small spaces. It features steerable technology that allows on-site personnel to change and adjust parameters on the fly. This is especially useful in adjusting the coverage area to match the size and location of the audience.

Brooklyn Tabernacle Updates Audio System

What are your short- and long-term goals?

My short-term goals are to continue to strengthen our sales network, as well as to leverage our relationships with our partner companies at the AEB group, including our distribution partnership with dB Technologies. Long-term goals would be to continue to grow market share within the midlevel production market as well as pursuing large-scale integration projects. We’ve always been entrenched in this segment of the market, and we have been deployed in several stadiums and arenas throughout the years. We look forward to going back to our roots to make sure we are catering to this market in 2021.

What is the greatest challenge you face?

The greatest challenge we face is navigating the industry during and after COVID. Based on the state of the market, how do we pivot our thinking and strategy for today and the future? From the audio perspective, how do we scale the P.A. system and design to accommodate the coverage needed now, but also have the ability to cater to full attendance and coverage down the road? For us, the most important thing right now is to stay connected with our customers and make sure we are meeting their changing needs during this transitional period.

EAW MKD1200 Series Loudspeakers Debut

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