After reading the marketing hype on Arboretum's web site for their plugin effects package, I was almost drooling at the idea of testing them out. Are they worth it? At $299, they are certainly less expensive than some competing effects packages. One of the nice things about Hyperprism is the logical set of tools that it provides - almost 30 different plugins - if your software will allow you to chain direct-x plug-in effects, you can take, for instance, the noise gate plugin and gate a reverb, a classic effect made famous by Phil Collins and others. I was able to get quite a few chained up on a mono track in Cakewalk. Of course, the Vocoder is what I was dying to hear, but due to some technical difficulties, I got much less use out of it than I did their HyperVerb(TM), which is Arboretum's Flagship product. All of the Hyperprism effects sport a similar user interface - a set of sliders and buttons at the top, ouput level controls on the left, and a real-time controller, the X and Y axis of which can be...

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Hey Ted? How about laying down some funky rythym guitar on this track, I'll zip it over to you. Hey Pete? Could y'all put some of that New Orleans/Dr. John style piano on this file, using that 9 ft Baldwin at your place? I'll e-mail you the rough track and oh, by the way, I need it back in LA in an Hour. Huh? What am I talking about? I'm talking 'bout MP3 compressed audio, and I'm here to tell you that it's better than you may think. Imagine taking an entire stereo 2 track mixdown file (usually about 25 MBs) and compressing it down to less than 2 MBs with barely any audible degradation of the sound quality. Are you getting the picture? The time is coming when we can all collaborate over the e-mail, and I'm not talking about MIDI files, I'm talking about that '63 Fender Strat plugged into that Mesa Boogie. MP3 is capable of compressing audio at a 12 to 1 ratio and still producing very fine results. The question is "how dey do dat?" And the answer is your ears are playing tricks on you,...

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All writers want it, need it, got to have it. Ain't no stopping them. A "hit". A #1 record. The big payoff. The realization of all their dreams. Something their mama can show to the neighbors to prove that her son (or daughter) is not a bum, but a big deal songwriter with a "hit". Better yet, not just a hit but a "#1 hit". One of my clients has become a major writer. Whitney, Tina, Barbra, everybody wants his songs. He's a hero to the other writers. "If he can make it, so can I" Although, a few of his contemporaries wish he would die soon. They're so jealous of him. His death would be like passing gas. Kind of like relieving the pressure, if you know what I mean. Anyway, on this particular morning, I was working with a writer on a new song. "Did you hear that Alan's record went to #1 today?" she asked. Wow, no shit. Right out of obscurity and into the limelight. He would have something in the bank for at least the next couple of years. Definitely get his contract renewed at the publishing company. Major big-time....

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Another movie, another magic box, another magazine and another column. What does this have to do with anything? Plenty. I asked Rip if I could start writing for ProRec and after a long phone conversation about what I should write about, we came up with the idea of doing an advice column. The main difference between this column and the ones in other magazines is that I'm going to write about whatever you want me to. Yup, that's right. Whatever you, the reader want to know about just tell me and I'll fill your brains with my knowledge. My name is Jay Kahrs. I've been involved in music for about 10 years. I play guitar, bass, some drums and I also sing when I'm forced to. My main thing is engineering. I attended Five Towns College in L.I. NY for a year, then jumped head first into an internship, then freelance engineering. Now I have my own studio in the basement (like everyone else) that I run commercially. I've worked on projects for major labels, indie labels, demos, etc. I'm not all...

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It was with deep regret and sorrow that I returned the VoxBox unit sent to me by Manley Labs for evaluation. How deep, you might ask. Well, I considered selling my car or my furniture to keep it. How deep is that? The VoxBox is not your run-of-the-mill voice processor. At $4000 it is beyond the reach of many of our readers. However, in our recent survey, I discovered that the average investment our readers have made in equipment is $30K, and that 45% of them consider themselves music professionals. Then let me say that if you are a music professional willing to invest $30K in recording equipment, you should seriously consider buying a Manley VoxBox. I used to wonder about the relative importance of a mic preamp in the grand scheme of things. After all, the mic is a flimsy diaphragm vibrating in air. Surely that's the most important factor in recording. And there's the media: analog media has limited headroom until you move to 30 ips 2" tape, and digital media can sound grainy if you have poor converters....

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The most challenging tools for newcomers to the recording scene to understand are dynamics processors: compressors, expanders, noise gates and limiters. We are all familiar with tools like EQ, reverbs, choruses, flangers -- even if we don't know exactly how they work exactly we might understand what kinds of sounds they produce. Compressors are completely different animals because they work on the musical dynamics and their effects can range from undectectable to utterly bad. What, then, are "dynamics" exactly? Technically, dynamics refers to the variabilities in amplitudes. "Dynamic" material is said to have lots of variability in the amplitude of the audio. There is a relationship between dynamics and loudness. Loudness (usually) refers to the average amplitude of a track. Green Day is LOUD! Dynamic refers to the variability - the difference between the soft and loud passages. The Beatles' Abbey Road is dynamic.

5 seconds from Green Day...

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Tube simulators, tape simulators, tube warmth? What in the world is this all about anyway? Our fearless editor has commisioned me to write a report on these plugins, but I don't think it should be done without a little background info. First of all, I would like to stress that overdriven tubes (and overdriven tape) add distortion! If it's very light, they call it "warmth", if it's really heavy they call it "Marshall stack turned up to 11!" Regardless of what you call it, it is distortion. Maybe it's pleasant distortion, but it's still distortion. The only reason I mention this at all is because ever since the dawn of digital audio, them good ol' boys and girls in the marketing department of damn near every audio-oriented company on the planet have been throwing tubes into anything they can get their hands on, running up and down the banks of the river and screaming "warmth" to the top of their lungs! What this really amounts to is an attempt to cash in on the fear of the unknown. The unknown in this...

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I admit it. I'm a homereccer. My wife barely remembers what I look like. My non-musician friends don't remember me at all. Good thing I don't have any kids or they'd be in a one-parent household. My dog, bless his wagging tail, still loves me. Even when I run him out of the studio. The studio consists of three adjacent rooms. The first room is the control room. This room houses my computer recorder, mixer, my old metal rack of effect units, speakers, and a few chairs. The control desk faces out over four windows, each of which has a heavy drape that can be drawn. The second most important room is the bathroom. Besides serving obvious biological functions, the bathroom also doubles as a vocal booth. It has tile walls and a somewhat heavy bathtub curtain. When the curtain is drawn, the vocals recorded in it take on a nice resonant quality from the tile walls (without the curtain, consonants are too harsh). This resonance serves two functions. First, it's a great vocal effect in many occasions...

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The Manley VoxBox is Manley Labs' entry into the current vogue: multi-effect voice processors. These devices typically couple a microphone preamp and compressor into a single unit. Other features often include EQ, limiting, de-essing, and A/D conversion. Voice / multi-processor units are a natural progression of audio's movement to workstation-based recording. They provide a specialized short-path route to get signal from the mic to the media as cleanly and effectively as possible, bypassing the messy preamps. busses and EQs of mixing consoles. Although such units have been around for decades their recent resurgence is almost certainly due to the thrust of the audio industry to supply high-quality tools to the modern small (but very pro) studios. I received my VoxBox about 10 days ago, and plan on giving it the full review in the July ProRec. However, after just a few days of heavy use, I am so amazed by the quality of this unit that I felt it necessary to...

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Which is better, tube or semiconductor circuits? And if differences exist, what are these differences? The tubes vs. semiconductors issue is both emotional and rational. Many leaders in audio technology continue to hold up the vacuum tube as the state-of-the-art in audio amplification. Others find greater value in modern solid-state devices. Many amateurs and professional alike are left wondering what the reality is. Manufacturers have been likewise polarized: a number of market-driven manufacturers have found that their equipment sells better when it's designed around a tube - regardless of the sound - because of the current "tube hype." Reputable manufacturers of tube equipment - with more esoteric and expensive designs - find it difficult to sell into this market that assumes that "anything with a tube in it is better". This reminds me of the "Mac vs. PC" debate - unending, unresolvable, polarizing - often vitriolic. Therefore, the aim of this article is not to decide anything, but you let you -...

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Drugs. Uh, oh, here it comes. At some point everybody in the music business comes into contact with them, either by doing them ("Oh, it makes me s-o-o creative!") or by having to work with someone who has done them ("Could somebody please pick Joey up off the floor so we can get started"). The process of making music come to life is such a precarious one that songwriters will do almost anything to help them create. When they get stuck and their brain is devoid of song, the idea of artificially kick starting the cerebrum with a nice fat joint doesn't seem so bad. The only problem is that the "high" is selective - you get blasted but everyone else around you is straight. You think you've just sung the doo doo squat out of a song while everybody in the control room is opening their phone books to try and round up another singer. You stank. But to your ears it was gold. "Oh well, fuck 'em. When I'm famous they'll eat dog food off the floor to get me to sing their piece of shit tune". Not a good session. One...

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Walter Murch is known as the film editor and sound mixer for some of the best movies of our times - the Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient are just a few. Recently a popular Pro Audio magazine interviewed Mr. Murch in a special audio-for-video section. However, the topics discussed did not really go into technique and technology, but focused more on aesthetics. I wanted to find out more about what technology he uses when mixing for picture. Walter Murch

Walter told me that he is the only person who actually does the editing AND the sound mixing on feature films, an approach he developed at Zoetrope which he helped found with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. I dropped in on Walter at his farmhouse in Marin County, California where I asked him too many questions over a cup of tea. He had just returned from Cannes a couple of days before with his re-edit of Orson Welles "Touch of Evil"....

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About the reviewer: As many of you know, I'm currently writing the US manual for Samplitude 2496. I work closely with SEK'D as an independent contractor, but I'm not an employee. So… as a professional DAW user with quite a bit of experience with Samplitude Studio 4.0 and Samplitude 2496, I'll do my best to provide facts and opinions that are truthful and accurate. I'm calling this an Overview / Review because I've included a lot of technical information about the program. Projects - The DNA of an editing session Samplitude 2496 is unique in that it can record audio to hard disk or your system's RAM. 1. HARD DISK PROJECT: A recording made to hard disk is called an HDP (Hard Disk Project). In most cases, you'll want to record to hard disk due to the large storage requirements of digital audio. 2. RAM PROJECT: A recording made to your system's RAM is called an RAP (RAM Project). RAP recordings are useful for short segments of audio such as Impulse Responses (for use with the Room Simulator) or drum...

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"When I'm drivin' in my car, And the man comes on the radio He's tellin' me more and more About some useless information Supposed to fire my imagination" .....................(Mick Jagger/Keith Richard) Where the do I want to go today? Hey, Microsoft! I want to go fishing today. I want to wade out into a stream and feel the cold rush of freezing water between my legs. I want to stumble across the gravel of a stream bed, fighting for balance against the relentless push of the current. I want to wrestle a five- pound rainbow trout to a standstill in the midst of a springtime wilderness. Can you take me there, Microsoft? I didn't think so! Yo, MS! I've got it. Florence, Italy! I want to sit down in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio with a jug of local swill and play my guitar . . . and bay at the Mediterranean moon like a drunken coyote. Can you do that for me? "Airline tickets," you say. Not really the same thing is it? Wait! I know . . . I know! I want to go down on Catherine Denueve today. I want to taste the . . . . ...

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I was tired of turning up the inputs on my mixer to record my hiss, um, I mean my Bass guitar and decided it was time to get a direct box. I didn't know what to get, so I asked the folks who made my bass - Warrior Instruments (http://www.warrior-w1.com) what to get - they recommended the Bass Driver DI. I on the other hand didn't want to spend the $250 dollars to buy a little box. I went out and bought a Rolls Adb 2 for $40, which actually sounds great on my acoustic guitar with a Dean Markly Pro-Mag soundhole pickup, but not really what I wanted for bass guitar. After annoying my favorite salesguy at Banana's At Large, testing various doo-dads and processors, I decided to blow the bucks and get the Bass Driver. (My advice to the cheap and those on tight budgets - give it up, spend the money, do it right, you won't be sorry, and you can always sell it if it's worth anything in the first place)

...

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Most songwriters tend to think the world revolves around such global-impacting issues as: 1. Will Ms. Big-Big-Big Star record one of my songs on her next album? 2. Will Mr. Big-Big-Bigger Star record one of my songs on his next album? These questions are with them, morning, noon and night. The President resigned. Who cares? "Did you know that my song is on hold over at CBS?" We had a small atomic war with Lithuania this morning. "So what - I got the next Janet Jackson single". Not the most caring about everyone else group of people. So, keeping this in mind, a small earthquake should have little impact on songwriters, right? Think again. Scared the piss right out of every writer I know. Come to think of it, not only the piss but just about every thing else they had ingested over the previous 24 hours came out. Kind of like Mother Nature don't care diddly about music. The nerve of her. The night of the "not quite Big One" I was working on a song for two of my up and coming clients. These...

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I remember the first synthesizer I ever played. It was a Roland Juno 106. Many of you are already guessing my age. You're right. The Juno 106 was one of the first affordable programmable synthesizers for the masses. With its LFO and resonance filter it had the quintessential "analog synth" sound: big, fat bass, zingy treble, and an unearthly sound. Several years later and I would have walked up to this thing and embarrased everyone - including my mother - with a hideous interpretation of Van Halen's "Jump". At one point in history "Jump" was the "Stairway to Heaven" of keyboard pikers. However, when the Juno 106 was released, Van Halen was still an all-guitar band. I walked up to it and started playing Jean-Michel Jarre's "Equinoxe Part 4". Today, this technology is "vintage" to me. Keyboards are almost universally digital, and one of the goals of digital synths is to sound more "analog". Wow... I remember the release of a piece of vintage gear... maybe I'm not as young as I thought. Kinda...

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I have an eight-track tape of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It's in a box, in my attic, nestled among ot