SPRINGS is a diverse new library of sound design source material released by HISSandaROAR and recorded by Tim Prebble.

Traversing from literal & very powerful trampoline springs & impacts through very strange bowed & manipulated extention springs all the way to abused outboard hardware (AKG BX5, Vermona Retroverb, Doepfer A199 with an Accuphonics tank) and of course, the classic slinky – but in this case stretched across a room and recorded with a contact mic at each end! Three sizes of thunder drums (long flexible springs attached to a drum resonator) were also hit, bowed & scraped to capture physically useful sounds as well as more evocative abstract material. This library is a diverse and inspiring collection of material that is incredibly fun to play with!

Available at $79 until December 25th (Regular price $99). Delivered at 24bit 96kHz. Includes 1,100+ sounds (6.9GB).

Below is a q&a with Tim, talking about the springs and some HISSandaROAR news:

What inspired the library?

Tim Preble: Being a bit of a dub-head I’ve always been into spring reverbs – I bought an AKG BX5 off ebay a decade or more ago, and I always remember almost blowing my speakers when I had it cranked up & accidentally moved my rack! But it was when I was working on the Cirque De Soilel 3D film that I had an epiphany. There is a scene in the film with some super hero characters doing totally outrageous moves on trampolines and despite being told the scene would be a music montage, I decided to try augmenting the rhythm with trampoline sounds. Next door to my studio is the rehearsal space for local circus group Fuse Circus, so I borrowed a small trampoline from them and recorded it using contact mics as well as normal mics. As soon as I listened to the contact mics I realised it was basically a large scale spring reverb – every hit made the all of the springs resonate! We did end up using some of the recordings in the final mix, and after I uploaded a video of recording those effects a few people contacted me, wanting access to the sounds. I couldn’t give them those particular sounds as they were specifically for the film, but I made a mental note to revisit that particular prop. And as always I started researching other elements I could record….

Click here to view the embedded video.

What else did you find?

TP: Good characterful springs are not actually that easy to find, but one source that proved useful was from exercise equipment – I disassembled a few chest expanders, and spent a bit of time attaching them to objects in ways that would encourage resonance… I also bought an old kids toy – a ride on horse, that was suspended by nice creaky springs. I explored other spring reverb outboard effects – I also own a Vermona Retroverb which is great – it actually has a ‘crash’ button on it that sends an impulse to the springs, but it also has a really nice resonant filter. My modular synth has a spring reverb, a Doepfer A199 module, so I bought an old Accuphonics 3 spring tank and used the module to get clean audio output from it, and I beat the hell out of that tank! I’m surprised it survived, but it was worth it. Some of the short sounds make me think of retro weapons, but some of the flickery sounds I got from it by applying friction along it, I have never heard before!

And of course I messed around with some slinkys – I hunted for the biggest/longest one I could find and then tensioned it horizontally across my studio, with a contact mic at each end, 20 feet apart. Another device I messed with are called Thunder drums – I bought one when I was in Bali a few years ago, its basically a long small tightly wound spring that is attached to the skin of a drum. If you shake it, it makes a sound a bit like thunder and hitting the spring has an almost flangey tone to it, but I discovered a few other interesting ways to extract sounds from it. Bowing the spring while varying the length created some really interesting pitch bends, but so also did rubbing or scraping your hand along the spring. A few times I’ve had to make sounds for someone suddenly abseiling or lowering down & I’ve always struggled for source material with that constant descending friction, but I’ve found a great element now!

Were they difficult to record?

TP: Some props really took some thinking about, because the sound they produced was acoustically very quiet but attaching a contact mic to the primary vibrating element meant the mic itself would absorb and/or stop the resonance. I think there is a concept in physics, where the act of making an experiment alters the circumstances or environment to such a degree that the experiment itself is no longer valid – it was a bit like that! I also soon learned that it is difficult to keep a contact mic attached to moving objects, so it took different setups and strategies depending on the specific sound I was after, even within the same prop. That little wood block with the tiny spring at the start of the video is a good example. I could get tone from it but I couldn’t record it – it just didn’t vibrate enough to excite the wood it was attached to. It was only when i clamped it down & actually attached the contact mics between the wood & the spring itself that I got interesting results. But, as you see (backwards) at the start of the video, it eventually flew to bits!

What are your favourite sounds? Any happy accidents?

TP: This library is full of happy accidents! Someone on my blog asked how I go about choosing what sounds to record, and I had to confess its half intent and half happy accidents – experimenting & being curious. The last prop I recorded for the library was when I revisited that trampoline, and having spent so much time recording other springs I had a few more ideas about how to get some new sounds from it. One aspect I now know is that to get ‘big’ dynamic sounds often requires gentle technique and hitting that trampoline gently with a gong beater, and being mic’d up and gain staged accordingly allowed me to get some huge subby sounding impacts, which feel more powerful than the hardest hits that I did later. But going back to that tiny spring, I now knew that attaching the contact mics on to the spring itself led to interesting sounds (it just couldn’t be the spring that was doing all the work, or the mic would detach) So the last sound I recorded was one of my favourites: attaching the contact mics directly to the springs and then very gently hitting other springs & elements of the trampoline. I swear there is an entire gamelan orchestra inside that trampoline when it was rigged this way – I could have sat & played it for hours. Over-recording was actually a real problem with this library, not over-level but content. I’d find a sound that I loved, that was really evocative or interesting and I could easily keep playing with it for hours! Must. Stop. Recording.

It’s been a great year for independent sound libraries – do you think its reaching saturation point with all these boutique library start ups?

TP: To be completely honest I think we’re barely scratching the surface. If you combined all of my libraries with all the great libraries released by Frank, Michael, Chuck & all the new sites, we would hardly match 5% in terms of quantity of the old school libraries such as Sound Ideas CD collections or whats on the Sound Dogs site. But in terms of quality, resolution and providing unique, characterful and interesting sounds I think at times we surpass them… Every time someone releases a new collection of recordings, whether you buy them or not, you know they are a resource waiting to be called upon. I sometimes dream about the huge library resources studios like Skywalker Sound must have, and while we’ll never get close to that, at least we’re slowly providing more diverse options, and they are options available to anyone.

Whats next for HISSandaROAR? Are you having a holiday??

TP: Indeed. This is my last library release for the year. As 2012 is a busy year with films for me I’ve deliberately been recording as much as possible and I have another couple of libraries recorded. The last task for me for the year is to finish the HISSandaROAR Christmas present, which is a free 24bit 96kHz collection of Tortured Cymbals, a preview of a library for next year. It will get sent out to everyone on the mail list next week, as a small gesture & to say a huge thank you for all the support this year. And thanks to you, Miguel and everyone at Designing Sound for an inspiring year!!
Happy Holidays!

Echo | Collective is a new independent sfx library created by sound designer Rene Coronado and composer Brad Dale, from Dallas Audio Post Group.

Their focus is on uncommon sounds. Found instruments and tools that can be manipulated and recontextualized sonically into a film or music project. The project starts operations with five releases:

• Forgotten Zither
• Antique Accordion
• Oliver Typewriter
• Borroughs Protectograph
• RR Adding Machine

All the sounds are recorded and delivered at 24-Bit/96kHz, with detailed metadata and unlocked .nki files for Kontakt.

Below is an q&a with rene, who shares more information about the project and their first releases:

What inspired you for starting echo collective?

We love finding interesting sounding things and recording them so that we can have fun bending them around. We have always done a lot of recording for our various projects, so we’ve been using the cataloging and metadata workflows of sound effects libraries for a long time, and there’s some different stuff in our work from what’s already out there.

Do you have anything to say about the independent sfx world?

The market is actually pretty saturated right now, so that affects how we approach things like pricing and what we include in each collection. Also, quality and usability can vary from library to library, so we work hard to make our stuff the best it can be. With all of that said, the guys that do this stuff are incredibly cool and supportive of others. We got lots of great feedback on our sounds and design from the guys that do this at a high level, and we’re aiming to put stuff out there that lives up to the standards that they have set.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How was the work with the typewriters and protectograph? could you tell us about the variety of sounds you obtained and how you manipulated the devices?

These turn of the century business machines are so unique, and when you run across one you jump at the chance to grab it and record it. I lucked out and found the typewriter, check printer, and adding machine all in one booth at an antique shop.  Once the owner of the booth plugged them in and showed me that they worked I was sold. After a little research I discovered that each of of those machines was over 70 years old, which made the perfect working condition of each even more impressive.

For the most part they all just click and whirr and chunk, which doesn’t create much of a stereo field. Given that, I decided that it would be far more useful to roll 3 unique mic perspectives on each one. I close miked the front and back of each, and also put up a wide mic in omni so that I could potentially drop those sounds into a bgfx track.

The case on the protectograph actually comes off, which changes the sound of the stamping mechanism pretty dramatically so I recorded it both ways. The adding machine had some moving plates that got sticky with age, and they would occasionally jam and then release with a big metallic ring out which was pretty great. I turned that ring out into a musically tuned Kontakt instrument that sounds very unique. The typewriter had the most moving parts, so after all of those were covered pretty thoroughly I did a bunch of drops and rattles for good measure. It was a lot of fun recording all of them.

I wonder how was the setup and recording process on the zither. I understand you used different mic options, positions, as well as some unique performances on the instrument.

Both the zither and the accordion were recorded a little bit non-traditionally. We would mic them up, and after a fair amount of general coverage and manipulation I’d crank some long reverb into Brad’s headphones and we would really start exploring the textures of the instrument in a very different context. The result is a set of really musically inspired manipulations that go in a different direction than just a bunch of clinical coverage.

The zither also got some extra love as a stringed instrument because we were able to both bow it and use an ebow in combination with some props to really get some unique sounds out of it. It has lots of broken strings and we would do things like scrape broken strings together and thump on the exposed wood that the strings would normally cover. We’d bow the broken string that was still attached to the tuning peg for some really freaky horror sounds, and yet we could still get these great angelic sounds out of the single strings resonating with the ebow.

We actually did the zither in three different long sessions because we just kept finding new sounds in it.

Also, I was inspired to build a stethoscope mic after watching a few Diego Stocco videos. Mine doesn’t really record anything above 200 Hz, but man it really extends the low end of the stuff we stick it onto. I hadn’t built it when we did the first zither session, but once I had put it together I knew we had to use it. That thing in combination with the xy overhead mics really turned the zither into a different instrument.

For the other mics we used a pair of line audio CM3s in XY and I had a COS 11 inside the sound hole and a 4050 wide in omni. In the end, the amount of stuff recorded made offering every mic perspective prohibitively complex (and redundant) so we did what we felt were the best mixes of each combination of mics per performance. The room mic was use judicially to add some air, and really gave a nice character to the samples.

I see there are Konkakt patches including in the libraries. Any special thought about this feature or the software?

Our goal is to make libraries that are not only useful to sound designers, but also to musicians and game designers. We feel that Kontakt is a good way to extend the libraries beyond just what the sounds are and into what they really can be. Having the sounds preprogrammed into an industry standard sampler really allows users to get into things like layering and pitch manipulation very quickly. Kontakt also has a powerful set of design tools built in that let us explore ways to bend the sounds into new forms with eq, distortion, delays, etc – all without having to render the effects for the end user. Also, the Kontakt sets are completely unlocked which means that the presets that we’ve designed can act as a starting point for even further manipulation.

With all of that said, we’re coming at these instruments from a sound designer’s perspective. This means that even though we have a musical instrument programmed into a Kontakt patch we focused more on making unique textures and noises than on things like multiple velocity layers of individual string plucks.  Also, we spend our time building and recording cool sounds instead of Kontakt interfaces. There are many very good straightforward zither libraries out there, and we’re not trying to replicate those at all.

Any plans for the future? What kind of things are we going to see on echo collective?

We have a ton of ideas and projects in the works, but we’re going to keep them under wraps until they’re ready to go. Also, the feedback that we get on things like our musical approach and our Kontakt instruments will influence the way we prioritize things.

Pro Sound Effects is hosting a webinar called “Why Sound Matters” (part 2), presented by sound designer Stephan Schütze. It’s tomorrow, no cost.

After high demand, Stephan Schutze of the Foundation Sound Effectst Libraies and PSE are hosting a second webinar about the importance of sound in education. This webinar will focus on sound production in the field, and is geared towards educators in media production. However, anyone interested in sound recording techniques will learn a great deal as well.

Register

CONTACT MIC is a new library of sound design source material recorded by Tim Prebble and released by HISSandaROAR, including 1,556 sounds recorded at 192kHz/24-Bit using contact microphones.

Recording with contact microphones is fascinating territory to explore due to the unpredictable results; it encourages experimentation! Inspired by the incredible work of Alan Splet and Anne Krober on Dune (as described in this article) I bought a custom built Trance Audio Inducer contact mic and preamp back in 2001, and have been experimenting with it ever since. A couple of years later I added a pair of Barcus Berry Planar Wave contact mics and while these mics featured in Tortured Piano this library is something else again: it is literally the result of hundreds of hours of experimenting.

One aspect of contact mic recording that is fascinating for sound design is the lack of acoustic – there is no reverb due to the sounds being recording via direct vibration, not through the air. This feature alone makes for very malleable sounds, excellent as components and layers in complex, composite sounds or for when you need an abstract organic sound but where the actual source must remain concealed…

The library is available at Hiss and a Roar for $99. Also check this article at themusicofsound, where Tim talks about the release.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now here’s our Q&A with Tim, who shares some details about the recording process, props used and the inspiration behind the library.

What inspired the library?

Back in the 2001 a friend gave me an old copy of American Cinematographer magazine from 1984 which had an interview with Alan Splet & Anne Krober about their work on the film Dune. One section described their use of the FRAP contact mic and it totally set off my imagination! [article link]

What model contact mics did you use?

After reading that article I went hunting for a FRAP only to discover they were no longer available. I pursued some DIY approaches but the results just were not that useable – it was obvious the frequency response was not full range. But then I found the Trance Audio Inducer, which came with a matched preamp. This was a revelation to me, especially with regards to the tonality of the sounds and the low frequency response. A year or so later I bought another contact mic for my double bass, but it didnt have the same sensitivity so I went back to Trance Audio to buy a second Inducer only to discover that model was no longer available either! Next I tried the Barcus Berry Planar Wave contact mic, which also came with its own matched preamp and I ended up buying two of them as they produced similar great results to the Trance Audio. The library is all new recordings, but its based on my experiences recording with these for the last ten years.

Are there any special techniques or advice for using contact mics that you can share?

Well, the first & most important aspect is the matched preamp. Like most sound editors I own many different recorders & preamps but it seemed the only contact mics I got great results from were the Trance Audio and the Barcus Berry when used with their own preamps. I learned this through experimenting but only recently discovered why that is. I’m sure the reasoning behind is very basic for anyone who has studied electronics but this article spells it out…

“”The problem with piezo guitar pickups and contact mics is that they are not well matched to typical audio inputs. By their nature they can generate a lot of signal, but they cannot drive a 50 kilohm typical line input. The pickup needs to work into a much higher impedance, typically 1 megohm or so.

The reason why these devices often sound tinny is because the piezo sensor presents its signal through a series capacitance which is small, typically 15nF or less. When wired to a normal 50 kilohm line input this forms a 200Hz high-pass filter, which eliminates the bass.

If wired to a consumer plug-in-power microphone input of about 7 kilohms impedance, the result is a 1kHz high-pass filter. Hence the reputation for poor bass performance….”

So impedance matching is the key and explains why many DIY contact mics sound thin – people buy a cheap piezo element & plug it into a line or mic input. They get a signal & it is useable, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate what a 200Hz High Pass Filter does to the sound.

What about props? Contact mics were traditionally created for musical instruments, what else do they respond well to?

Psychologically using a contact mic makes you look at the world in a different way. We are all so used to hearing and interpreting the world through air molecules and acoustic spaces. And an important part of being a sound recordist is being able to hopefully predict how sounds will react in a space. But using a contact mic makes you put your assumptions aside and experiment because the results can be counter-intuitive. Sometimes I’ve found a prop and thought: “THIS will sound AMAZING with a contact mic” and then hooked it up & been thoroughly underwhelmed. What seems resonant & complex through the air may well have a singular pitch & be far less interesting with a contact mic. But its when the reverse is true that things get exciting.

I’m sure I’ll work out the pattern  at some stage, but in many ways the mystery is actually a pleasant side effect. Not knowing the outcome means when you do stumble across a beautifully resonant body, time slows down & you become completely absorbed into physically manipulating the sounds. I totally agree with Dave Farmer about not always wearing headphone when recording, with the one exception being when using contact mics. The exact placement can make a huge difference in the tonality of sounds, especially on hollow resonant bodies. Depending on what the object is made from there is also often a huge range in dynamics, which means setting levels can be tricky and requires constant monitoring. But it also fascinates me that some of the sounds recorded with a contact mic that you perceive as being big, loud, aggressive sounds were actually created through very subtle movements. The big blue water bottle in the video is a good example: hitting it hard with a mallet produced a harsh sound, but hitting it very gently with a soft bass drum mallet produced a sound that would excite your subwoofer!

With such diverse sounds, how did you go about categorising them?

About half way through recording the library I came to realise that a good way to think of the sounds is ‘resonant body’ versus ‘activator’. Over the years I’ve slowly built up a collection of props that respond well to contact mic recording, many of which feature in the new library. But I’ve also slowly collected up a suitcase full of activators, so the files are named based on this approach. But I also spent time making sure every file in the library has a photo of the prop included so you get an actual image of how the sound was created when browsing in SoundMiner.

What are some of your favourite sounds form the library?

My favourites tend to be the unexpected new sounds I discovered while recording. One good example is the rubber recording. I had never thought of sticking contact mics to a balloon but I did and spent half an hour getting fairly familiar sounds from them and I didn’t include those sounds in the library. But it got me thinking, what if I used a much bigger balloon and only partially filled it with air, so it is a large resonant body but with very low air pressure? I gave it a try & discovered some really expressive sounds which I can only describe as sounding like a whale with indigestion! The low frequencies are quite amazing, because the pitch variation was totally controllable and they sound unreal at half speed!

Like most sound effects editors I have a lot of metal recordings in my library but during these sessions I managed to record some metal sounds that I have simply never heard before. Due to how I was applying pressure the two metal elements produced almost rhythmic stutter effect!

Another funny sound I stumbled across reflects an aspect of why contact mic recordings can be so useable. Because the sounds are recorded through direct connection with the vibrating material, there is no room acoustic or reverberation. This means the sounds can be used as layers or components in composite sounds without the listener being able to identify the source, but it also has a less obvious benefit for recording. One example was when I was recording different scrapes & movements across a metal bowl. I was performing them with a knife and a drill grinder bit, but I was interested in more complex sounds & remembered I had my battery drill at the studio. Normally if I recorded anything that involved the drill, it would have the sound of the drill motor all over it. But if the contact mic is not attached to the drill it doesn’t hear it at all! So I started putting different activators in the drill & trying them…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whats next for HISSandaROAR?

Having spent so much time in the studio lately I am craving some exterior recording, and as summer is just starting in New Zealand I am going to record a library of beach ambiences before the cicadas start & make life difficult. I’m also working on a library of metal spring recordings and am pursuing another creature vocal library. Onwards!

Rejoice! There is a recording available.

A huge round of thanks goes out to Ann for taking the time to chat with us, and thanks to everyone who participated in the chat. Note: If the webinar does not seem to be playing back correctly when you click on the link, try refreshing the page.

Update: Ann also sent along a few comments, post webinar, that she’d like me to share with you.

On dual shotgun microphones for recording ambiences:

“After thinking it over some more, and hunting down some examples to listen to, using two Sennheiser shotgun mics for a stereo pair is something I personally would probably NOT recommend. From what I was able to listen to, the Sennheiser’s still have that thin slightly strident sound that you get in many of their mics, and the crossed pair can sound like you’re recording in something of a tunnel. I’ve always felt that mic placement and what you record is more important than what gear you use. A really great cheaper mic that wasn’t discussed by the group is the Octava cardiod mic. The Octava doesn’t always have great qualilty control and not all are the same but if you listen to them before purchasing them you can find ones that sound quite good for the cost. (nope scratch that I just looked Guitar Center doesn’t carry them anymore…they were brilliant when you could get a good Russian one but..they outsourced to China and cut quality.”

On technique vs. gear:

“Several years ago I was on a nature recording panel at the AES. At the time I was supplying sounds to Ben Burtt for his upcoming Star Wars trilogy. I played a recording for him of a chair rolling around that sounded like a wounded animal and got him interested in my recordings. Afterwards a guy in the audience contacted me and said he wanted to intern with me. I put him off because I assumed he just wanted to find a way to get to work on Star Wars with Ben. He persisted for quite awhile and I finally agreed to meet him.

His name is Jon Meyer. Jon brought in a recording he wanted me to hear of his. Even I was shocked when he pulled out a Dictaphone recorder that he had used to make this recording. (I don’t even know if you know what a Dictaphone is?? it was a little recorder than men used to record letters they wanted their secretaries to type. The quality of the recordings was really pretty poor, it didn’t matter just as long as the secretary could understand what he was saying.  He had pushed the mic in when he recorded and got awesome squealing sounds that were simply ingenious. I instantly hired Jon. I realized he was the real deal. We worked together on the Hollywood Edge CD “Common Sounds Heard in Uncommon Ways.” We had a blast discovering music inside crazy simple objects around the home and office.”

The chat will take place at 11AM (U.S. Pacific Time) and is, like everything we organize on this site, completely free. It will be a moderated discussion that will give you the opportunity to interact directly with Ann. If you have a webcam and microphone, have them ready. If you have a particularly interesting question, we’ll give you the opportunity to come on cam for the rest of the group so you and Ann can discuss in real time (have your headphones ready to prevent feedback loops though). [note: Skype will not be required for this, AnyMeeting has updated their client, allowing us to have multiple video/audio streams simultaneously.]

You can register for the live chat here…so sign up now! ;)

The webinar will also be recorded and available for viewing afterwards if you are unable to attend.

For this discussion, we’ll be talking about some of the ways work-flow was influenced by the advent of digital technology. That’s going to be our starting point, and we’ll drift along in the wind from there.

The webinar will take place at 11AM (U.S. Pacific Time) on Saturday, October 29th.

The recording of this webinar is available here.

Crash Course In Location Sound is a two hour live webinar that will give you an overview of location sound for film and television taught by Ric Viers, author of The Sound Effects Bible. This is your opportunity to learn the tricks of the trade as well as insider secrets to lav placement, booming techniques, plant mics and more. There will be a Q&A session, so bring your questions!

Registration is only $29.99 per person with limited seating.

Sign up for Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 9am PST
Sign up for Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6pm PST

One attendee will win a FREE Microphone Kit from Rode Microphones (valued at $1,200*) that includes:

• (1) NTG-3 Shotgun Microphone
• (1) Blimp
• (1) Boom Pole
• (1) Boom Pole Bag

More info at The Sound Effects Bible

New article from Develop Magazine, October’s Issue:

PUT TOGETHER Forza Motorsport 4 and racing car audio specialist Nick Wiswell, and arguably you have a marriage made in game audio heaven. UK game audio’s loss was US studio Turn 10’s gain as Wiswell and his family upped sticks, moving from Cheshire to Redmond just over one year ago.

With a wealth of experience garnered whilst working on global hits like Project Gotham Racing, he nevertheless faced some fresh career challenges. Previously heading an in-house team of sound designers and audio programmers, he was confronted with a fundamentally different modus operandi – a small core staff team ‘focused on the bigger picture’ scaling up with outsourcers and freelancers based on specific project needs and using audio middleware.

“The manifesto for audio was clear: to make the racing sound more exciting, improving the car audio to be more visceral,” explains Wiswell. “My predecessors had been looking at the potential for additional dynamic mixing and DSP which fell right into my wheel house; so I took that and ran with it. We didn’t want to over-amp things too much and break realism, but we were definitely looking for enhanced excitement.”

Download here.

[Article by Ian Palmer]

Dreambase is the result of Alex and Mark’s (two ex-Dolby employees) desire to setup their own post-production sound facility and work in the more creative side of the film industry. Dreambase is located in the former GWR radio studios with two edit rooms and a VO Booth/ Foley Room between the two rooms.

I visited there last year simply to say hello and was surprised to learn that they were editing and mixing feature films using Logic. Inspired by the recent Mix article I thought I would write this article to find out why they are using the DAW instead of the industry standard Pro Tools.

Ian Palmer: You’re a relatively new studio. What made you choose the Apple/Logic platform?

Alex Hudd: Initially it was for cost reasons. I had used Pro Tools since 2000 for music recording but as a Mac user was aware of what Logic was capable of, and the extensive tools it possessed out of the box. The software is so intuitive and the audio library browser is well integrated with the package that track-lays for sound design and composition are very quick to rough out and start working on. Of course Logic’s strength is the ability to compose and this had also been very useful in some projects that I have composed music for. The recording take management in Logic is excellent for ADR sessions as it’s very easy to find the best lines from multiple takes, compare them and bounce out to a composite.

IP: What have been the advantages of such a decision?

AH: We saved money on the initial start-up costs which for a studio can be quite considerable, especially as we had overheads like rent to pay each month.

IP: Have there been any drawbacks?

AH: Lack of compatibility with studios running Pro Tools exclusively is a drawback but the projects we have worked on have been mostly ‘in-house’. At the end of the day we can bounce out any number of stems to take to another studio and import into their own systems but not being able to pass over automation or plug-ins is a disadvantage time- wise.

Editing is not as quick as with Pro Tools as Logic doesn’t posses the equivalent of a ‘Smart Tool’. Also the I/O setup is pretty basic so complex bus routing is not as easy as it is in Pro Tools. We use both Logic 9 and Pro Tools 9 at the studios depending on the project we are working on. And with OMF/AAF interchange it’s easy to exchange files between the two systems.

IP: What hardware are you using?

AH: We use an RME Fireface 800 as the main I/O which is used with Logic and Pro Tools, plus a Rosendahl Synchroniser. We use the Euphonix Artist Series as hardware controller with has excellent integration with both Logic and Pro Tools.

IP: Have you ever worked with another studio and used OMF exchange files?

AH: Yes, we have had OMFs from other facilities and been able to import into Logic with no problems. We have also exchanged Logic projects with other studios running the same software. For example, they might have track-layed and premixed in Logic and then passed the project to us for a final surround mix. It makes for a very quick turnaround.

IP: Pro Tools has AudioSuite to apply changes to audio files quickly without having to setup channels routing and re-recording in real time. How does Bounce-in-Place compare?

AH: Bounce In Place is fine but you have to be organised to make sure you keep track of the tracks! I would love to see an AudioSuite equivalent in Logic (a bit like Soundtrack Pro), however you can do a lot of basic processing such as gain and pitch shift by using the Sample Editor in Logic and applying the processing from there. But beware, you canʼt apply processing to multitrack sound files from within the Logic Sample Editor. Soundtrack Pro has this one covered but it would be nice to see this in Logic now.

IP: You run a Mac Pro without any additional processing hardware. How has the software/ hardware combination performed? This is especially interesting for your feature film work. How does the system hold up running so many tracks and plugins?

AH: We run an 8-core Mac Pro and the performance has been excellent so far. Occasionally you get unexpected crashes, much like you do with Pro Tools but it’s incredibly rare. On a recent feature film we used Logic for Dialogue Edit, ADR, Foley, Sound Design and Final mix, and it handled everything beautifully whilst maintaining good sync between the video and audio. In the final mix we had Dynamics and EQ on most channels along with bus sends to several different Space Designer 5.1 reverbs and it worked very well. Merging separate dialogue, music and effects projects for the premix and final is very straightforward too.

IP: How much in depth automation control do you get with Logic and the MC Artist control surfaces? It uses the EuCon protocol, how does that compare to ProTools?

AH: You can automate pretty much everything in Logic from plug-in and surround panning parameters to mute and bypass. The usual Write, Latch and Touch and Read modes are all available. It doesn’t have a Touch/Latch combo mode as Pro Tools, which can be especially useful for small setups where you want certain parameters to latch such as plug-in automation where it might not be easy to keep your hand on the controls and others to touch such as the fader level. Manual editing of automation parameters is also very easy, which is incredibly useful for very complex sound moves in action and animation projects.

IP: How useful is Audio Quantizing for dialogue and ADR editing?

AH: The Audio Quantization Engine in Logic is excellent, especially for syncing alternative dialogue takes on scenes. In the last film we did with Logic one of the scenes had some prop noise during the shoot so it was decided to wild-track the dialogue from the scene whilst it was still fresh in the actors mind. The scene was probably around 3-4 minutes I think, which is a long time! Using the Flex Time tools in Logic, syncing the dialogue syllables and nuances was much quicker and ultimately more accurate than cutting and cross-fading. For ADR it means that even a close-up can be re-voiced with great accuracy.

IP: Do you use any other 3rd party audio software such as SoundMiner or izotopeRX? If so how well do they interface into Logic and your workflow?

AH: I have the PPMulator meters for the broadcast work we’ve done, but apart from that I tend to use the stock plug-ins. I work in quite a traditional way I guess, so rather than purchasing the latest ‘do-all-analogue-warmth-celebrity-mixer-transformation’ plugins, I tend to use multiple processing to get the effect that I’m after, understanding the physics of sound more than just pushing a magic button. In Logic you can easily save channel strip settings so I have a whole variety of channel strip setups to get rid of Red Camera noise, telephone a voice or bus compress the dialogue, for example.

IP: I’ve heard good things about Space Designer as a convolution reverb, how does it perform for film mixing and the requirement of realism?

AH: Space Designer is excellent and has plenty of surround-ready presets out of the box which you can EQ and process as necessary to get the environment you’re after. You can also record impulse responses from locations and to put those into SD for the ultimate in realism! As we all know though what you hear on location and what you hear in the studio can be different so I would expect a little tweaking to take place before we arrive at the realism (or non-realism!) that we are after.

IP: How well do the plugins that come with Logic perform in relation to post sound? Have you bought any additional 3rd party plugins?

AH: the standard plug-ins in Logic are very comprehensive. My favorites are the Match EQ which will take a reference response of a piece of dialogue for example, then apply that EQ characteristic to another piece of dialogue in order to match the overall spectral response of the original. This is great for matching boom and radio mics or for matching ‘boom-over’ and ‘boom- under’ recordings in a film. The Expander is also great for reducing background noise, and this, coupled with the narrow notches on the standard EQ are very effective at removing unwanted interference from cameras or lighting, whilst maintaining the quality of the dialogue.