I go to the Audio Engineering Society (AES) show every few years to keep up with the latest gear and software. The most recent show—the 119th—just wrapped up, and O'Reilly Digital Media asked me to tell you about some of my favorite items.
The latest Audio Engineering Society convention attracted more than 450 exhibitors and 20,000 attendees.
This will be an unusual report if you're a home studio owner, because I've always approached AES from a commercial studio owner's perspective. (I have owned and operated Blue World Music, a digital recording studio, based first in New York City and then Austin, Texas, for many years.) Whereas a home studio owner is probably primarily concerned with budget, then quality, and then name recognition, I've had to shop in the opposite order. My studio clients don't care if my Brand X microphone preamp sounds better than my Neve or API; they simply want the Neve or API name. I don't agree with that intellectually, but since my studio pays the bills, I have always bought my gear with name recognition in mind, so I can tell the producers and labels who pay my commercial studio rates that I have the Neve, SSL, API, Pultecs, and so on.
Well, I sold my SSL console last year because I saw the trend: professional music production is no longer centered in commercial studios like mine. A majority of records these days are being made in personal studios on smaller, more affordable systems. I decided that the days of consistently booking an SSL studio in Austin were almost over and that the best assurance for my future as a digital audio aficionado was to find a way to tap into the burgeoning personal studio market.
My solution was to create eSession.com, a database of the top session musicians and engineers. The site, which officially launches in November, allows anyone with a home studio and a high-speed internet connection to hire world-class musicians or engineers to work on their projects; all financial transactions and file transfers are handled by a drag-and-drop interface. The eSession players and engineers have home studios as well, which lets everyone work in their own space at their own time.
So this year I went to AES as an exhibitor to unveil eSession.com to the public, and I was able to see the gear from a completely different perspective. My main concern is no longer who is booking my studio, but making sure that the people in my database all have great-sounding, affordable gear that assures clients any work hired, performed, or mixed through eSession will be the highest quality possible. For the first time, I was able to breeze through the Neve and API booths and finally take a closer look at some of the little guys—the boutique audio companies—to learn what they're building and why. At these booths, you can meet and talk to the actual people who conceived and hand built the gear.
Please keep in mind that my focus is always on professional music production. While bang-for-the-buck is great, the bang usually comes way before the buck for me, so my choices in gear may not reflect the music hobbyist's choices or budget. In this report, I highlight the gear that I feel benefits the more professional home studio market. However, I did discover some great new gear that happens to be inexpensive, which I'll list at the end.
Gina Fant-Saez interviews Dangerous Music cofounder Chris Muth.
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Dangerous Music is one of my favorite audio companies. Owners Chris Muth and Bob Muller are two down-to-earth guys who create audio products that fill a huge gap in the ever-expanding personal studio market. As you may know, there's a huge debate in the professional recording industry about whether mixes created exclusively on the computer can rival mixes done on a large-format analog console like an SSL or Neve. People who make their living mixing "in the box" (ITB) will vehemently defend their stance, whereas the staunch old-school guys will raise their analog batons in retaliation. However, there are many Grammy-winning engineers who work with both systems and will tell you their honest opinion.
Given the choice (and I have asked a lot of top engineers), they agree that sending audio from a digital audio workstation (DAW) out of multiple outputs and summing it via analog truly gives their mixes a wider stereo image and more depth. That doesn't mean that ITB mixes don't or can't sound amazing—so please don't start blogging me on this debate. It just means that the ears I trust think analog summing sounds better.
Enter Chris Muth, Bob Muller, and their Dangerous 2-Bus systems. These boxes take your DAW's multiple outputs and sum them via high-quality analog components to a stereo output that you then send back into Pro Tools, your half-inch tape recorder, or whatever device you mix to. There are two models: the Dangerous 2-Bus and the smaller, less expensive 2-Bus LT. At $3,000 and $1,500, these units aren't cheap, but again we're talking bang first, buck second. If you want your mixes to sound like they're going through an analog console, look here.
Muth goes above and beyond in his designs; I can tell you that he meticulously hand-picks every knob and circuit to maintain as much integrity in the hardware as he does in the sound. I replaced my SSL with a Dangerous Music system after researching and testing other summing systems, such as APIs. Before selling the SSL, I ran three mixes: one on the SSL (no EQ or compression), one in-the-box mix, and one through the Dangerous system. I invited a handful of Austin's best engineers and producers to listen, and in blind tests, we had a unanimous decision that the Dangerous mixes beat out everything. They were simply cleaner and warmer to everyone.
The 2-Bus boxes have been out for a while, but at AES Dangerous Music unveiled what became my favorite piece of gear at the show: the Dangerous Monitor ST ($1,899).
The Dangerous Monitor ST (shown with the 5.1-channel SR expander on top) restores hardware control and signal routing to a software studio. (Click to enlarge.)
This is the Mackie Big Knob with a PhD and a personal trainer. The Monitor ST restores the hardware features that were lost when recording went virtual: a hardware volume knob; a cue system; a talkback system; a speaker switcher with level control for individual speakers; a headphone amp; four extra inputs for your CD player, DAT player, and mixdown deck; and more.
The icing on the cake is the sexy remote controller that connects to the one-rack unit with an Ethernet cable. I am so used to little handheld plastic remotes that I break or lose at some point. This controller is unique, substantial, and crafted out of metal. Every single feature of the Monitor ST is accessed through this remote, so now you can sit in your sweet spot and configure your entire system without reaching down and losing your mix perspective. Muth has built the ST to be expanded as well. Simply add another one-rackspace Monitor SR box ($1,299) and mix in surround. The Dangerous Monitor ST is one the most well-thought-out enhancements I've ever seen for DAWs.
Another boutique manufacturer at the show was Coleman Audio, owned and operated by audio guru Glenn Coleman. Coleman specializes in meters, speaker-switching modules, and monitoring devices such as the M3PH MKII, which provides four stereo inputs and three speaker outputs. The Rolling Stones reportedly travel with two Pro Tools HD systems that they use for live percussion loops in songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil," and they use Coleman's M3PH to switch between systems, in case one goes down. Coleman says the M3PH is more commonly used as a control-room monitor switcher and has become very popular among top mastering engineers.
My personal favorite piece of Coleman gear, since my passion is always for the DAW user, is the TB4 MKII, which is similar in concept to the Dangerous Monitor ST. In one rack space, this unit offers a main volume knob, four stereo inputs, a cue and talkback system, a separate headphone jack that allows the engineer to switch between the cue system and the control room source, and even a mini jack that supports a remote talkback device.
The latest addition to the Coleman line is the SM5.1 ($1,250), a six-channel VU-metering device. It was obviously built with surround metering in mind, but it would also be a terrific add-on for multichannel DAWs that don't provide accurate metering.
The Coleman SM5.1 brings high-quality analog metering to a computer DAW. XLR pass-through jacks on the back prevent the meters from affecting the signal.
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I also need to mention Dan Kennedy's Great River Electronics, another high-quality audio boutique that seems to be embracing personal studio growth by providing powerful mic preamps and EQs. Great River's latest addition is the MEQ-1NV, which combines a class-A mic pre designed to give your recordings that 1970s vintage sound, with a class-A, discrete EQ modeled after the vintage Neve 1081. These two create a stunning front end for the quality-conscious home or portable studio, and are priced accordingly at $3,375.
Combining a classic-sounding mic preamp and EQ, the Great River MEQ-1NV helps ensure you'll get the best sound into your recording system.
Another company committed to creating great front ends for the DAW market is Tim Spencer's True Systems. I am a big fan of their mic pres and have set up a few drummers' studios with their Precision 8 eight-channel systems. At the AES show, True Systems introduced a much-needed addition to their product line: the P-Solo. This compact, portable mic pre makes a great front end to any DAW and is selling for less than $600. For a pro-level mic pre, it's worth every penny.
The True Systems P-Solo packs the design and sound of the company's acclaimed Precision 8 and P2 Analog preamps into a compact, affordable box.
For those on a budget who still want top-notch recordings, I would have to give the Joe Meek OneQ the bang-for-the-buck award. This one-channel mic pre/EQ/compressor/de-esser/enhancer retails for just $799. It's the best deal I found on the floor for anyone wanting professional sound on a serious hobbyist budget.
My last mention goes to Beth and Mark McQuilken of FMR Audio. "Bang for the buck" can never be uttered in the audio industry without talking about their gear. Their most famous piece is called the RNC, which stands for Really Nice Compressor and retails for $199. They have been making the RNC since 1984 and it is a staple in home studios, professional studios, and live rigs. It is the best-sounding, most affordable stereo compressor for the money and you can fit three in one rack space for less than $600. FMR also makes the RNP8380—Really Nice Mic Pre—a stereo mic preamp that retails for $499 and sounds unbelievable.
At AES, FMR debuted the RNLA7239—Really Nice Levelling Amplifier. It's a specialized stereo compressor that is perfect to put on your stereo mix or your vocals to level out any stereo source while giving it a warm, analog character. The FMR gear may not be the sexiest looking gear on the market, but if you're looking for bang-for-the-buck, look no further.
Ugly panel; great, gooey sound: the FMR RNLA7239 is a compressor that's designed to thicken your tracks.
It's perhaps an indication of the maturity of the digital audio workstation market that the AES show seemed to be more about hardware than software this year—and that I, a DAW enthusiast, found the most exciting products to be analog add-ons. Remember that these are my personal opinions and that I chose gear that caught my eye for my own production methods. That said, please leave your own recommendations below.
Gina Fant-Saez is the CEO of eSession.com, the owner of Blue World Music, and the author of Pro Tools for Musicians & Songwriters (Peachpit, 2006).
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