Archives for 2003

In spite of the general perception of hard times in consumer electronics sales, with store closures and weak revenue reports aplenty, perhaps this is an encouraging sign of health in the industry.

Onkyo Corporation has gone public and begun selling shares on Japan’s Over-The-Counter exchange.

The Onkyo brand is well known to audio enthusiasts. Onkyo has been making audio and video components for more than 50 years, and more recently the company has established itself as a leading manufacturer of home theater components and systems. Onkyo is also taking leadership in the emerging home entertainment networking niche, with its Net-Tune technology and products.

Onkyo can boast of a worldwide manufacturing and marketing structure with more than twenty facilities including production plants, development centers and sales subsidiaries.

In announcing the stock offering, Onkyo CEO Mr. Naoto Otsuki states:

“Onkyo Corporation has gained the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Japan for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Over-The-Counter (OTC) issues (stock code 6729) to be listed on the 25th of February 2003 on the Japan Securities Dealers Association (JASDAQ) market. This has been achieved through the continued support and patronage that all of you have brought us.”

“As a leading producer, we have continuously refined analog and state-of-the-art digital technology through the development of unique components. Now, the trend is ‘pictures and sound,’ that is to say a continuing age of enjoyable ‘sight and sound’ as a whole.”

“Onkyo has unveiled a new company logo, which features ‘Imaginative Sight & Sound,’ a concept meaning superior visual management and sound reproduction technology. The foundation of which has made Onkyo a leader in home theater and positioned on the cutting edge of home network technology.”

“This company will continue to keep a high brand image brought about through refined analog and state-of-the-art digital technology and a rigid adherence to bringing you the most reliable products today. This will undoubtedly continue to enhance our corporate value in the marketplace.”

Onkyo International Web Site

Onkyo USA Web Site

The music industry may have fallen on tough times, but you wouldn’t know it if all you had to go by was Joe Chiccarelli’s weekly planner.

A highly-decorated engineer and producer, whose award-winning career began in the Boston area where he was raised, Chiccarelli has worked with some of the best talent in the business, including Beck, U2 and Elton John.

And he’s never been busier. Chiccarelli recently mixed and produced a new release by Clem Snide called “The Soft Spot.”

“I heard some of the group’s earlier CDs and liked them a lot,” says Mr. Chiccarelli. “They’re a very song-oriented band with a very alternative sound.”

Since Clem Snide lives and works out of New York City, the L.A.-based Chiccarelli has been working on the record at the newly christened Brooklyn Studios. “It’s a very nice studio to work in. They’ve got a Neve 8068 console and a lot of other vintage gear, which I like to use.”

Chiccarelli travels with a suitcase full of his own gear, and these days it’s packed with a Daking Mic Pre/EQ and a Daking FET Compressor.

“John Siket turned me on to the Daking stuff several years ago. He’s a great engineer who’s worked with Sonic Youth and Dave Matthews,” comments Mr. Chiccarelli. “John and I were working on a record for Interscope at the time, with a band called Huffamoose. I was impressed with both units as soon as I heard them.”

“Geoff had told me that the Daking Mic Pre/EQs were reminiscent of the Trident A range consoles. Early in my career I worked at Cherokee Studios, and they had a bunch of those boards, which I really liked.”

“Geoff was right. The mic pre’s do have that 70’s quality that the Trident A epitomized. They have a very ‘present’ sound, with a forward mid range that isn’t overly hard. The 70’s sound is characterized by big, warm tones and lots of live on the top end, whereas the 80’s sound is smaller, harder and edgier. The Daking mic-pre’s have that 70’s sound that I love.”

Daking 52270B Mic-Pre/4 band Equalizer (top) and 91579 Compressor/Limiter both feature all-discrete transistor circuitry and class-"A" amplifiers

“I’ve used the mic-pre’s and EQ’s on a variety of instruments, from acoustic and electric guitars, to snare drums and drum overheads, and on vocals. The Daking FET Compressor is excellent for drums. It also helps with room mics and electric guitars. I did a jazz album in Canada not long ago with vocalist Jane Siberry and the harmonica player Carlos Del Junco. Jane’s a wonderful, moody singer. I set up the FET Compressor on the input chain and it worked beautifully with her voice.”

Sometimes, less is more, says Mr. Chiccarelli. “For the drums on this record we simply set up a single Royer 121 stereo microphone, and passed signal through a pair of Daking FET Compressors. The result was a fantastic drum sound.”

“I also used this compressor on the drums I recorded for Tracy Bonham’s new Island Records album. The producer on this project, Greg Wells, has his own studio, Rocket Carousel, in Louisiana. We used the Daking FET Compressor on the acoustic guitars as well, and it made them sound very bright and alive, but not overly hyped. With rock bands in particular I tend to go for sounds that have lots of character and personality; I don’t want a sterile, hi-fi sound. So I like compressors and mic-pre’s that have a distinct vibe, and Jeff’s stuff does.”

These days, finding the right combination of tools is part of the producer’s job. “I use a lot of digital technology, and nearly every record I cut these days is tracked in ProTools. For me it’s a question of marrying the new stuff with vintage gear, or with gear like the equipment Jeff Daking makes, to warm up the digital sound. I’m working with a cutting edge Latin group, Cafe Tacuba, which has an album coming out on Universal. There’s a lot of live playing on this record, but the group also uses sequences and techno elements that give it a very unique feeling.”

Geoffrey Daking & Co. Web Site

TransAudio Elite Web Site (U.S. Distributor)

A quarter of a century after his death, Elvis is topping the charts once again. The re-mixed greatest hits package “Elvis: 30 #1 Hits” has gone triple-platinum in America on CD, with sales of nearly nine million worldwide, and the DVD-Audio release tops the charts for the 5.1 surround audio format.

The enviable task of re-mixing the classic Elvis Presley tracks fell into the hands of David Bendeth and veteran mixing/recording engineer Ray Bardani.

Canadian producer/engineer David Bendeth has worn many hats in the recording industry. As a guitarist, he toured with the legendary drummers Billy Cobham and Lenny White. Bendeth’s songs have been recorded by a host of major artists, including Joe Cocker and Jeff Beck.

He’s also comfortable sitting in a businessman’s chair. Up until recently, Bendeth was senior vice president of A&R for RCA Records. He recently produced and engineered Bruce Hornsby’s new album, “Big Swing Face.”

“It was when I was producing the Bruce Hornsby project that I met Ray Bardani,” says Mr. Bendeth. “I asked Troy Germano, who owns The Hit Factory in New York, to recommend an engineer, and he mentioned Ray. We got along quite well, one thing led to another, and we ended up working on ‘Elvis: 30 #1 Hits’ together. My title on the Elvis project is compilation producer and mixer. Bardani is listed as mixer and engineer.”

Bendeth and Bardani spent a little more than three months at The Hit Factory assembling and re-mixing tracks for both stereo and DVD release. What kind of shape were the original masters in?

“Interestingly enough, all of the masters were in good shape except for ‘Way Down,’ which was the very last hit Elvis had. That song was recorded in 1977 and was the only piece of material that came to us on two-inch tape. We needed to bake that one as the oxide was falling off!”

Over the course of his career, Elvis was tracked with many different technologies. Now, it was up to Bendeth and Bardani to create a seamless whole out of material that was originally recorded in a variety of ways.

“The first thirteen tracks on this package were originally recorded in mono, so there was nothing we could do to them but master as artfully as possible: that was handled by Ten Jensen of Sterling Sound. George Marino, also of Sterling Sound, did a superior job of matching top, bottom and mid-range levels with the stereo mixes that comprise the remainder of the record.”

“Around the time of the release of Elvis’ ‘In The Ghetto,’ engineers began tracking him to 8 and 16-track recorders. In fact, one of those tracks, ‘A Little Less Conversation,’ was a worldwide number-one hit for the remix artist JXL last year. This cut came to us on Pro Tools and we mixed it in 5.1.”

“We had to have just about every recording platform you could think of in the studio, along with the original recordings. We even had to borrow an old RCA three-track tape machine from a museum to make the transfers! Fortunately, Elvis was an RCA artist, and this project was released on that label, so we were able to get our hands on the original masters, which was a big help. Believe me, when they arrived at the studio people were lining up to get a look at them!”

Bendeth chose to work at The Hit Factory for several reasons. The mix environment of all of the studio’s rooms is pristine, for one thing.

“I love the SSL J9000 console they have as well. Choosing the right equipment for this project was absolutely essential. You’d think that remixing a master tape that had only three tracks would be simple, but we actually spent as much time riding the vocals and EQ’ing the tracks as we normally take mixing a large multi-track session.”

How do you take a three-track source and remix it to give a convincing 5.1 sound field?

“We actually worked with both the three and four-track masters in a way that had never been done before. We set up a Tannoy speaker in a very large room at The Hit Factory. In front of the speaker we placed a SoundField ST250 Microphone System. In back of the speaker we placed a variety of vintage ribbon mics. The idea was to recreate the space and feel of Elvis’ band, and then place him at the heart of the group.”

“The SoundField technology is really amazing. Although, to tell you the truth, it’s so revolutionary, that I still don’t quite understand how it works its magic! The microphone takes a single point signal and tracks it to multiple tracks. We split it to five different tracks of a Sony 3348 digital recorder. Somehow the signal, which doesn’t sound that different until you output the various tracks to the SoundField SP451 Surround Processor, is interpolated by the system. When you incorporate the processor into the picture, you end up with a signal that’s separated into five different spatial dimensions, six if you include the sub-woofer information that it also outputs. It was really incredible.”

“Ideally, the system works best when you feed the ST250 microphone information from eight or nine different directions. That way, the SP451 Surround Processor can accurately represent the real image in 5.1. However, we didn’t have that luxury when working with the mono, and three and four-track masters. We were learning on the fly! That’s why in the mono mode, we set up the SoundField microphones behind the speaker, to help create more ambience for the surround field we were creating.”

“The final results are really exceptional. We’re proud of the fact that we were able to create one continuous sound field, across an entire CD, that started out with tracks recorded over many years and in many different formats. There’s no way that we could have achieved the results that we got without this revolutionary new SoundField technology.”

Soundfield Microphones Web Site

Soundfield USA Web Site

Previous: Searching for Music Online

On Rhapsody, you can search by artist, track, album title, or composer: type in search words, choose a search type from a pull-down menu. Results show albums, artists and track titles, with material available on-demand highlighted in blue. Click on any data, and the browser takes you to a either an artist summary page, or a specific album detail page, depending on context.

On an artist page, you will find a complete listing of the artist’s albums, a link to find “stations” on Rhapsody (continuous play-list programming in many genres) that play the artist, listings and links to similar artists, and links to relevant content around the Web. On an album page, you will find the cover art, and a complete track listing, with links to either “listen now” or “add” the individual tracks or the complete album to a personal play list maintained by the Rhapsody software.

While you are listening to music, either on-demand or via one of the pre-programmed channels, artist and album data loads into the browser so that you can dig further when the music catches your interest.

Rhapsody’s search and browse interface is elegant, logical and provides useful results quickly. It also integrates track data with additional background info and the music itself, in an intuitive way that takes the experience of searching for music online to a new level.

Next: A closer look at RealOne Music (MusicNet)

Also:

AudioWorld’s Full Review of Rhapsody (Feb.19 2002)

AudioWorld’s Full Review of RealOne Music (Feb.19 2002)