President/Editor/Publisher: Kerry J Haps
Vice-President: Michael Kolar
Secretary: Chris Cwiak
Treasurer: Eric Roth

Volume 22 Number 10
October, 2007

EARS meets at planet10studios
22N29 Pepper Rd. Unit Four, Barrington, IL
Tuesday, October 30th 7:30pm

This month, EARS meets at planet10studios where our own Jim Johnson will show off the studio that makes him proud to show off his most recent work after just about every EARS meeting he makes it to. He’s been at it with this ‘work-in-progress’ studio since 2000. Keeping busy with everything from jazz to metal and all points in between, and with considerable success with acts such as Sleeping Shelby and L.W.E. He’s currently working on a country album co-produced by the Notorious H(mf)B (Harry Brotman). Harry’s Sonic Bistro also works closely with planet10studios as pretty much all of their projects make their way into the Bistro’s fire and some of Brotman’s prized gear is in regular use. Jimmy’s proud to have his studio endorsed by CAD Microphones, Steinberg, Blue, and IK Multimedia. He’ll also be showing off his fine collection of vintage ribbon and dynamic mics that they use in every session.
 
The usual snacks will be provided and parking is plentiful. They’re located on Pepper Rd. just off Rt. 14 (Northwest Hwy), 2 miles West of Rt. 59 and 1 block East of Kelsey Rd., and you can also click here for directions.
 
Last month’s meeting really ran late into the night. I’m not sure how Jimmy feels about when we should wrap up, but I’m going to make a call and say that anyone still there at midnight will have to don a Halloween costume of some sort or give Jimmy some candy. - KJH

Recap/Appreciation File

This recap, written by our secretary Chris Cwiak, is great, but I also just want to say my own thanks and how much I enjoyed CMS. These guys have a real labor of love going on. They showed us a slide show of the entire process of construction from bare space to the final, beautifully designed room. Chris had to leave a bit early, so one thing that he missed was the fact that this must have been the latest running EARS meeting I’ve seen. I attribute it to how wonderful the room sounded that some of us just wouldn’t leave. We just sat listening to music all night and talking about how much we were enjoying it. Thanks, Bob and Jason, for your patience with us and for putting everything you had into your wonderful mastering room.  - KJH
 
EARS MEETING AT CHICAGO MASTERING SERVICE 9-25-07
 
This month’s meeting took place at Bob Weston and Jason Ward’s Chicago Mastering Service at 3052 W. Carroll in Chicago.  The building that houses the facility was built in the 1920’s and originally housed the Egyptian Lacquer Company. The construction of the building called for thicker walls and a thinner roof; if the highly flammable lacquer exploded, it would send the bulk of the force of the explosion upwards rather than outwards, preserving the structures adjacent to the building. After searching high and low for a building with few support columns in the middle, they moved into the space last July. Weston got in touch with old friend and Boston acoustician Bob Alach to design the space for a super-quiet, accurate listening environment. 
 
The mastering control room is laid out in all cherry wood: walls, diffusers, portions of the ceiling, and even the acoustically designed control surface. Jason and Bob did the vast majority of the work of constructing the room (with Jason even taking a nail through a finger!) with help from some friends, relatives, and paid professionals for the hard stuff. They built out a box with new walls slightly spaced from the old walls.  Several layers of about 80 diaphragmatic sound-control panels were created using particle board, masonite, plywood, and 703, and hung behind the walls. Sound Control Board was used to completely cover each and every drywall surface before the interior walls went up. A sticky gooey substance known as Tremco was used between all seams of drywall to help in sealing the room. The back wall, being a little closer than preferred was designed to deflect sound off into two alcoves, each with RPG diffusers matched to the room, which reflect the sound back out off the same deflectors to appear to come back as if from a more distant back wall of diffusion. There is also a bass trap filled with stacked sound control panels between the custom designed desk and the acoustically transparent video projection screen. They opted to go for the projection screen to eliminate the more typical computer screen that would otherwise sit right in the middle of the acoustic space. The screen’s size is roughly equivalent to having a 36” display right in front of you.  The walls have sheer black fabric screens as does the front half of the ceiling. The back half of the ceiling just behind the listening position consists of two panes of 1/2” laminated tempered glass which lets in the natural light of the sun -- something we engineers aren’t used to seeing! In fact, the room designer told Bob and Jason that they as engineers wouldn’t like all that light streaming in and recommended an ordinary ceiling. Bob jokingly says that the white-painted wood vaulted ceiling above the glass lends the feel of Nantucket during the day. The HVAC for the room is run at very low velocity in acoustically treated ducts with lots of turns. All of the turns have fins in them to help steer the air gently into the turn and decrease turbulence. The air just falls quietly into the room. 
 
Shea Ako designed the mastering transfer console.  It includes six inserts, an MS encoder/decoder, a stereo correlation meter and input and output level trims.  All the knobs on the surface are switches with 1/4 dB detents, not pots. The insert controller is all hardwire bypassed. There is a six-XLR patch bay at the back of the console. Shea boot-strapped the system’s grounding with two sets of one positive polarity and one negative polarity for each channel to enable better common-mode rejection at high frequencies than a standard transformer would. At -1 dB at 200 kHz, the system which feeds the SLS speakers is pretty damn transparent. The facility also has a Bob Weston-wired UPS and power conditioner to completely isolate the power for all the audio versus the regular building power. There is an arc welding operation adjacent to the facility that graciously agreed to run all of their equipment simultaneously and then cycle through it all one-by-one to determine if the RF or EMF generated would interfere with any of the audio wiring. 
 
As if the impressive mastering room wasn’t impressive enough, Chicago Mastering also boasts a late 50’s - early 70’s designed Neumann VMS70 vinyl cutting lathe with an SX74 cutting head and SAL74 cutting amplifiers. The lathe is mounted on a concrete spring table tuned so that the resonance of the nearby Metra tracks won’t induce vibrations into the cut.
 
A huge thank you to Jason Ward and Bob Weston for opening their doors to us and showing such hospitality. I’m familiar with Bob’s work here in Chicago’s local music community and have an appreciation for the task that he and Jason have undertaken in helping that community by providing their expert services at a cost that doesn’t take advantage of those who have so little but would otherwise be forced to sacrifice so much more. Check out chicagomasteringservice.com for pricing, how to prepare your recording for mastering, in-depth biographical information and discographies of these two gentlemen, useful details on vinyl cutting and a spot-on treatise on the loudness war.
- Chris Cwiak, EARS’ Secretary 

The "Intelligence" of Intellectual Property
by Michael Kolar
 
As many of you know, I recently had to move my 2 studios from their home of 10 years to a new location. This, as you can imagine, or might have experienced, is a difficult procedure, taking care that everything makes it to its new home safely and in good working order. All the Pro Tools gear, two consoles (one large format), a variety of mics, a 50-inch plasma, and a variety of outboard gear, cables, and mics had to be transported across town. With all this large, expensive, and delicate equipment to move, I counted it a blessing that two small iLoks would simply be put in padded envelopes and set aside, later to simply be plugged into the USB hubs when both studios were set-up at the new location to authorize the software already installed on each G5. No big deal compared to all the other large hardware & expensive mics, right?
 
After two weeks, the new studio was painted, the acoustic treatment hung, (Big thanks to Gary & Mary Mazurek- Khan), the console wired up properly to its various gear and I was ready to boot the Mac Dual G5 in the main room to make sure all was in readiness. It was not! Sometime during the move the Mac hard drive where the Mac 0S resides became non-functional, and no Disk Warrior software or the good folks at Gilware could breath life back into it.  The drive was physically damaged (I was smart enough to pull all 3 Accel cards from the tower, but not enough to pull both SATA drives). I thought “No biggy, reinstall Tiger and just spend the day going to the websites of the companies that I legally purchased software from and download their most recent drivers/installers for my software. Since the authorizations are safely stored on the iLok which suffered no damage during the move, I should be good to go.” This is where the intelligence of intellectual property comes into question.
 
I pride myself on the fact that there is no stolen or cracked software running in any of my studios and donations were made to all shareware designers so I set out to solve this simple problem through the appropriate channels. My first stop was the McDSP site where I was going to download some plug-ins that I have accumulated over the years from various Massive Packs. While searching the support/download page I could not find any of my plugs’ installers available for download. The reason was that I needed to pay about $400 dollars to get the new Intel/PowerPC versions. As stated above, I still use my trusty old G5. McDSP, which considers the $1,500 Massive Packs a burden to them (they no longer participate in them) has removed the MP installers for those plugs, so the only way to run these new installers was to upgrade the authorizations on my iLok to the new version which supports a type of chip (Intel) I do not own or spend $3000.00 to go to the Emerald Pack to own all McDSP plugs. Since I already have over half of them, there was no reason to go down that path.
 
I decided to hold off on my McDSP plugs for a minute and go to Universal Audio, founded by legendary Chicago native Bill Putnam. “He won’t let me down. There must be a reason they are advertising their 60th anniversary as a pro audio company. I go to the UA website and click the support tab, and the first thing I see in bold is that UA has dropped support for TDM and only as a courtesy keeps the TDM software installer on their site. They would be more than happy, the page informs me, to give me a nice discount on their new PCI cards or a $300 dollar credit off the UA analog hardware of my choice. This was a huge blow, because most of my mixes have at least 5 instances of UA TDM plugs, (they do sound good). What did I pay $1500.00 for in 2001? When Mac goes to Leopard this month, UA will not update their TDM software for this platform & I will loose 3 of my favorite TDM plugs (LA-2A, 1176, & the Pultec EQ). At least on the bright side, the installers are there for Pro Tools 7.3.1 running Tiger & free to download.
 
Next stop was SoundToys, makers of Pitch Blender, Echo Boy and other fine plug-ins from the people who brought you the hardware Eventide H-3000. Since I have bought their plug-ins one at time over many years, but not recently, I went to download their installers, which I seemed to have no problems finding and they were downloaded for free. After installing them on the G5 and launching Pro Tools I was informed that I did not have the right authorizations. It seems they only clearly display the INTEL/G5 versions of installers for people who paid to upgrade/cross-grade their plugs & crazy people like me using a 21 month old computer need to waste hours of their life navigating a great little section of their website called “Legacy” to find the installers, which at least were free, until I go to Pro Tools 7.4.
 
Next was Eventide, but guess what, after typing “Anthology1” into their web site search engine, no results came up. They had their other software there to download, such as “Anthology 2” which has different plug-ins from those in version 1, so redundancy would not be their reason to not have it available. Luckily I saved an email from Eventide tech support from over 3 years ago which had the link to the CS 2 of “Anthology 1” that their tech department sent me, thank God the link worked after all these years and that set of plug-ins was off my list.
 
And it goes without saying that my WUP (Waves Update Plan) just expired 23 days ago. My Waves plug-ins were the first third-party plug-ins I ever purchased. I still have the Renaissance 1 & 2 bundles from before they grouped them into one super bundle. On the positive side, at least I know where I stand with Waves. I can always pay to get a 7 year old purchase up and running.
 
Don’t get me started on VocAlign.
 
When you shell out thousands of dollars for something that only exists in binary form, what exactly do you get? When you buy an analogue EQ or compressor, it should work almost forever, provided you maintain it properly. It doesn’t care if the audio coming into it is from a Mac or PC or a tape machine. What you see is what you get. Software is different. Many companies have different approaches to price and maintaining software over the years. Waves’ position is that the initial price is low and makes them little profit so it is the Waves Update Plan which guarantees that the software will work no matter what new chip sets, Pro Tools cards or OS’s come down the line while the WUP is in effect. McDSP prices their products on the higher side, but until this last round of me visiting their website, in 5 years I never had to pay to use the software I already own. (And by the way, often these situations include NO feature updates). They claim the amount of time that went to recoding for INTEL forced this new stance on them, while in the past they padded the cost so there were no down-the-road fees. With other companies like UA it seems they really don’t care what you paid for.
 
So what is the moral of the story? Should I have bought a real LA-2A and passed on UA’s plug-ins? Should I expect that companies should maintain my software forever regardless of Bill Gates’ or Apple’s need to change things up so they can make money? I don’t know, but there’s a reason my studio got back up on its feet despite all these obstacles. When I bought my Mac G5 21 months ago and loaded software off of discs or the internet I archived all the installer programs from that day on a $20.00 thumb drive! While it would have been nice to have all the most recent versions of the plugs and any bug fixes that go with them, that would have cost over $1000.00, with no feature enhancement and running on the same PT cards, OS, and processor chips I had when I bought them! So what company to buy from, whether analogue or digital, with or without WUP I leave up to you, but you wouldn’t dream of failing to back up your clients work, so remember to back up your own stuff, be you’re most important client.
 
P.S. The software is only half the equation, if you don’t have the right authorizer, challenge/response or dongle/iLok, then your really up the audio river with-out a paddle, just ask Danny Leake about the folks over at Steinberg when his Steinberg-only dongle broke.
- Michael Kolar, EARS’ V.P..

Suggestions Welcome!

There are endless good reasons to band together here as EARS. It can be whatever we want it to be. If you have any ideas for the EARdrum, our website, or future meetings, please email me. We have great meetings lining up for the rest of the year, some website plans, and a lot of good fresh energy and hopes for a more vibrant, participatory EARS, so of course we're very interested in your input on everything EARS. Please. :) -KJH

Dues!

Thanks to all who support EARS through paying their dues. Just as a reminder, they're due yearly by the October meeting and this is a prerequisite for voting and joining us for the Holiday Party. Dues checks can be made out to EARS and given to me or sent to the following address:
Engineering and Recording Society of Chicago
C/O Eric Roth, Treasurer
PO Box 98
Highland Park, IL 60035-0098 -KJH

Election

It’s also time again to be thinking about my least favorite subject, EARS politics. According to the bylaws, nominations for president of EARS were held at the September meeting. In a move that inspired both “shock and awe”, our V.P., Michael Kolar, nominated yours truly, Kerry J Haps to serve another year. After stopping just short of begging someone, anyone else to take the reigns, I accepted. In many ways, it still feels like we’ve only gotten started running things and we’ve barely had a chance to talk about the plans we have for the future, so of course I’d be happy to have the chance to continue for another year, hoping to make some good things happen. The next step according to the bylaws is to send a ballot with the October EARdrum, to be counted at the November meeting. At the October meeting, nominees can be given the opportunity to address the EARS membership. I suppose if you want a speech I’ll give you one… It will be entitled “Mission Accomplished” and I’ll deliver it standing on the console at planet10studios. The bottom line is a simple majority vote at the November meeting. - KJH

A (few) (more) word(s) from the Prez...

Hey Hey!

Well, this is already an exceptionally long EARdrum so I’m going to keep this part short. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our V.P, Michael Kolar’s interview in the Illinois Entertainer. Also look for a mention of planet10studios’ current projects at the bottom of the column.
 
In the interest of time, I’ll spare you the “Analog is Dead” rant I’ve been planning to lay on you.
 
But I have to at least report a couple of anecdotes from AES a couple of weeks ago in New York. The absolute highlight of which was a tour of Sear Sound that my colleague, Brian Porick and I had the pleasure of leading. (BTW… The bus driver had made a sign that said “Sears Studio” and, with the other conference at the Javits Center being the “World Beauty Conference” I had to play a little and welcome the attendees on the bus to the tour of the Sears Salon.) Let me tell you this: Walter Sear is a guy I’d like to spend more time with. (Walter, if you’re reading this I’d love to re-learn how to make coffee and clean a bathroom) It was an incredible pleasure to spend a few hours with him in his fine Studio ‘C’, devoid of need for acoustic treatment, surrounded by a forest of wish-list mics which are never taken off their stands and are therefore untouched and like new, a console part Avalon, part Neve and ALL good, and evidence of great love and care in every last detail of the place. Walter Sear told us his complete story and did his best in the time we had to pass on the guiding principles and lessons of his career so far. 
 
Another must-share: coming back from AES I was in line for security just behind a certain very prominent Mastering Engineer and EQ designer. I got quite a chuckle out of the seeing the staff watch him open up his laptop bag containing several hard drives which were only the tip of the ice -berg-, as then he emptied his pockets, -en- which he had a veritable -mass- of thumbdrives. They probably just thought it was strange. We must look like such geeks to the outside world. I just let my imagination go wild thinking of all the things that could be on those drives.
 
One very cool session I attended was sort of a debut of a BBC documentary marking the 40th anniversary of recording Sgt. Pepper’s by taking Geoff Emerick and a number of current popular young bands including the Kaiser Chiefs, The Fray, Travis, Razorlight, Oasis, the Stereophonics, the Magic Numbers, and even Bryan Adams into EMI’s Abbey Road to re-record the entire album, on the original equipment, employing the original techniques. Geoff Emerick was there in NYC for this special preview and seemingly watching scenes from the film for the first time. He seemed stunned at all the moments that were captured on film. It was extremely interesting and I really want to check out the whole thing. Maybe we’ll make it an EARS night.
 
Another fun session was a sort of retrospective on the Power Station, now Avatar Studios, by a panel including Tony Bongiovi, Bob Clearmountain, Jason Corsaro, Neil Dorfsman, James Farber, Nile Rodgers, and moderated by Zoe Thrall. It was great to hear some of the stories of how that legendary room came about, established itself, and recorded such amazing music.

Two hours on Beethoven’s Deafness, the Platinum Producers Panel, the Platinum Engineers Panel, the Platinum Mastering Panel, and three hours of how to mic a snare, just for starters.
 
One little product that I discovered and now absolutely must have: Primacoustic was showing a monitor isolation pad that incorporated a heavy steel plate which revealed to me, in a simple A/B comparison, that my Auralex MoPADs are allowing my monitors to move with the music and thus seriously smearing the image. Trust me on this one. If you hear a demo you will immediately shell out whatever they’re charging. They’re due to hit the market any day and I’ll be picking them up as soon as humanly possible. I JUST missed Peter Gabriel at SSL’s “Shed of your Dreams” . They basically are selling a complete studio in a wooden shed, delivered to your yard, complete from an AWS 900+ console to the art on the walls and the walls themselves, even the selection of wines. It’s “inspired by” the shed at the bottom of Mr. Gabriel’s garden where he’s written many of his hits, and it’s going for the bargain price of about a quarter mil. Speaking of Mr. Gabriel’s songs. Kevin Killen’s eSession.com stole the show floor (with close competition from Mercenary Audio, as usual) with a complete hotel room from which their sales reps sat on the bed demoing their new service. Oh yes, and the room was complete with a French maid. That –might- have had something to do with it.
 
Ah, there’s just too much to tell. I’m sure I’ll be recalling other stories and unable to hold them back, but you can also ask our own Danny Leake who I had the pleasure of bumping into there and Greg Riggs, who, by the way… I mean you just gotta see this guy at a convention. He really comes into his own. I’m keeping his cell number with me when I travel from now on. I think he’s a got a restaurant recommendation for every port. It was also good to see John Hardy at his booth, the rest of the Shure clan at theirs, and lots of other friends of mine or EARS.
 
I’m hearing Grammy Nominations are coming together and some of our own are in the running. Please do let me know if you’ve got anything in the running and I’ll be sure to let the troops know to pull for you.
 
It’s pull the trigger time for me in terms of some purchases I’ve been needing to make. If you’ve got any used but loved gear I’d love to hear about it, especially a UA 2-610, an Apogee Rosetta 800, nice monitors (something a couple steps up from my Mackies), a super nice, all I’ll ever need, pair of Small Diaphragm Condensers, a good pair of Auratones, a good monitor controller, or good pieces of acoustic treatment ala RealTraps, etc.. Also, if you’ve had a chance to try the Mohave Audio MA-100s (or can loan me a pair to try) I’m very interested. Same thing for those new Telefunken USA, R.F.T. mics. I’m very curious. (Now please understand that I fully expect, and intend, these questions to draw widely varied response from some of you… Bring it on!) I’m about to start a couple of projects and so it’s time to break open the piggybank where I’ve been saving up my overtime dimes.
 
By the way, I’m happy to report that my little bit of ribbing got very quick results when I mentioned that we had a freeloader at the BBQ. Dues were promptly paid and all is well that ends well. Remember, I may seem busy and distracted at these meetings but don’t be fooled, I’m watching and nothing gets by the Pres.
 
At your service,
Kerry J Haps