TORONTO AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY PRESENTS

Tour and presentation of Revolution Recording Studio with Martin Pilchner and Joe Dunphy
Tuesday May 22, 2012
7:00 PM
Revolution Recording Studios 36 Laing Street, Toronto, ON
One block east of the corner of Leslie Street and Eastern Ave.

Pre-meeting dinner, 5:00 pm at the Ceili Cottage
1301 Queen Street East, Toronto (just East of Leslie Street)
This month’s meeting will NOT be available live on-line, but will be available as a podcast in the archives.

PARKING SUGGESTIONS
There are a couple of options, street parking is generally ok, but there will be rush hour restrictions (likely until 6PM). Parking on Queen during the day involves a fee, not sure about the evening. Leslie is always free, not sure about Laing.

THIS MONTH”S MEETING IS SPONSORED BY:
BRTB
For more than twenty years, BRTB has been producing the finest quality cable systems for both the computer and the professional audio and video industries.
SHERWOOD SYSTEMS
Special Thanks to Sherwood Systems for providing audio equipment for the presentation.

THE STUDIO
Revolution Recording is one of Toronto’s newest premiere recording facilities. Partners Joao Carvalho, Joe Dunphy, John MacDonald and Kim Cooke operate the studio along with EMI Publishing stalwart Tanya Coghlan as studio manager.

Located on Laing St. in Toronto’s downtown east end just south of the house where Alexander Muir wrote The Maple Leaf Forever, the 8,000 square foot, three room facility has been built to the highest sonic and aesthetic standards. The room was designed by Martin Pilchner who has been nominated for the 2012 TEC Award for ‘Studio Designer of the Year’ for his efforts.

Among the features the main studio offers is a large 65’ x 40’ recording space with side walls of solid cherry, numerically optimized to provide sound diffusion yielding a well-mixed live sound to the room. Three studios share a well maintained equipment and microphone collection.

Revolution has already hosted the recording of new albums by Sarah Slean and Great Lake Swimmers among others. The Neve room, with its 2,000 square foot recording floor, has become a go to destination for orchestral sessions.

SYNOPSIS
The Idea
From the outset it was collectively decided that the departure point for the design of Revolution Recording would be to capture and recreate the spirit of the classic music recording studios. Time was spent examining many of the legendary spaces, endeavoring to distill their salient features. The task then fell to reinterpreting those qualities in a clear and readable way. It was important, that while embracing the spirit, each element was rational from an acoustic sense, and meaningful in its phenomenology. Scale, proportion, materiality, composition, lighting, spatial relationships and functionality all played an important role in design decisions. The end result is a space that honors the tradition of its fore bearers, but in its clarity, celebrates it in a modern sense.

The Realization
We will be taken on the journey of design, construction and realization of Revolution Recording Studios. With the use of construction photos and diagrams the many project challenges will be revisited and solutions presented as to how they were overcome.

Martin Pilchner, Pilchner-Shoustal International

BIOGRAPHIES
Martin Pilchner
Martin is a principal partner of Pilchner Schoustal International Inc., a company which provides turnkey design and engineering of recording/broadcast facilities and critical listening environments. Since 1986 Pilchner Schoustal has been responsible for over 500 facilities world-wide. Past projects include a ground-up music facility in Kentucky, Post production facilities for Director M. Night Shyamalan in Pennsylvania, and the largest film post facility to be built in India in the last 25 years for Yash Raj films in Bombay (Mumbai). Pilchner Schoustal received a double TEC award nomination for architecture and acoustics for their design of Angel Mountain Productions in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which is a 20,000 square foot ground up music and film post facility. Pilchner Schoustal also developed Acoustic-X software for small room acoustic optimization. This software is still in use world-wide by many leading room designers and universities. Martin has written many technical papers on the subject of acoustics and studio design and has co-authored work presented at the AES16th International Conference on Spatial Sound Reproduction. Martin’s original education was in electronics, where he worked as a engineer for Saskatchewan
Telecommunications before leaving to study recording engineering and eventually architecture. He has been a post secondary instructor for such topics as computer science, signal processing, digital audio, acoustics and studio design since 1986, and is currently the associate director of the Producing Engineering program at Harris Institute for the Arts.

Harris Institute | Facebook

Joe Dunphy, Co-Partner, Revolution Recording Studios
Joe Dunphy is a Juno Award winning producer and engineer who has been working in music, film, television and live sound for over twenty years. He lives in Toronto, and has a passion for analog audio, and specializes in building, refurbishing and customizing recording equipment. These interests have led him to share in the building of Revolution Recording, an exceptional studio with unmatched equipment. He is an owner and partner there, teaches workshops at Niagara College and has a nice wife and three grown daughters.

 
YouTube Video 1 | YouTube Video 2 | National Post

I had the pleasure of working on a documentary film with the talented director Shira Avni back in 2010. The film, Petra’s Poem, will be premiering this Sunday April 29, 2012 at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto.

Created with the assistance of the National Film Board of Canada and BravoFACT, this is Shira’s second film involving actors with down syndrome. Her first film, Tying Your Own Shoes is an intimate glimpse into the exceptional mindsets and emotional lives of four adult artists with Down Syndrome. An artful, four-way essay about ability, this animated documentary explores how it feels to be a little bit unusual. That film along with her most recent films John and Michael, and From Far Away have garnered over 30 grants and awards, including the prestigious DOK Leipzig Golden Dove and the NHK Japan Prize, and have screened in over 100 festivals worldwide, as well as on CBC, PBS and TV5 television networks.

More information on Petra’s Poem can be found on the Hot Docs website. Screenings are all at the Bell Tiff Lightbox and show times are:

Sun, April 29 7:30 PM
TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

Tue, May 1 4:45 PM
TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

Sat, May 5 9:45 PM
TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

To celebrate the premiere of Petra’s Poem I have created a showing of stills taken during the filming of the documentary. The photos are all candid portraits capturing intimate moments where the actors were experiencing joy, quiet, reflection and friendship. I found the actors a joy to work with and their personalities both special and fascinating. The energy and life in the studio was quite inspired. The photos reflect the way in which people with down syndrome process their environment, and the people around them, allowing for a unique view of the world we live in.

In this exhibit I purposely choose to use a 70mm, 2.20:1, ratio for cropping the photos to limit myself to only that which was the essence of the person in an exaggerated environment. I also choose to treat the photos in subdued light to contrast the high key lighting used to make the film.

I hope you enjoy the photos and please come out and support this wonderful new documentary.

TORONTO AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY PRESENTS

Audio Tape Recovery and Restoration with Richard Hess

Tuesday, 24 April 2012
7:00 PM
Ryerson University
RCC 361, Rogers Communications Building, 80 Gould Street, Toronto, ON
Corner of Gould and Church, east of Yonge St (Dundas Subway)
For parking info and map, goto www.ryerson.ca/parking/

Pre-Meeting “Dutch Treat” dinner 5:00 pm at the Pickle Barrel (corner of Edward and Yonge, just north of Dundas, in the Atrium).
This month’s meeting will be available live on-line, courtesy of Ryerson University at www.torontoaes.org.

PRESENTATION
From about 1950 through the 1990s, most of the world’s sound was entrusted to analog magnetic recording tape for archival storage. Now that analog magnetic tape has moved into a niche market, audio professionals and archivists worry about the remaining lifetime of existing tapes.

The near demise of recording tape as a consumer and a professional format has been swifter than anyone thought. The biggest step in the recovery and restoration process is getting as good-sounding playback as possible in order to minimize the need for restoration work.

In his presentation, Hess will discuss some of the challenges in playing tapes, some tricks, and his mantra of just because you can’t play the tape, don’t assume it’s trash. Due to copyright restrictions of the samples that will be played, this meeting will NOT be streamed or archived.

Other issues which must be addressed include
· Tape degradation modalities and getting hard-to-play tapes transferred.
· The absolutely horrifying number of combinations of track/speed/EQ/Noise Reduction
· Obtaining the best possible playback (it all starts there)
· Some workflow issues (how to get through the mountain and keep options open)
· Some digital storage comments (protecting what you’ve done)

Biography
Richard L Hess began his affiliation with tape recorders at age 10 in 1962, when he bought a Wollensak with money he had saved. After graduating with a BS degree in Communications from St. John’s University in New York City, he joined the Engineering Department of ABC Television in New York and worked there from 1974-1981. Moving to Toronto in 1981 to join McCurdy Radio Industries, he worked his way up to Director of Engineering, leaving in 1983 when the company was sold.

In 1983, Richard moved to Glendale, California to join National TeleConsultants, working there until 2004. He held titles such as Senior Project Director, Director of Engineering, Vice President, and Principal Consultant. He was responsible for oversight on many large projects, preferring the technical side.

In the late 1990s, Richard started becoming aware of incipient tape degradation in his own personal archive and started restoring and digitizing tapes for his friends. This became a business and, in 2004, he and his family decided to return to Aurora, Ontario, his wife Mary Beth’s hometown, and go full-time into audio tape restoration.

In October 2006, he presented a paper at the San Francisco conference of the Audio Engineering Society on “Tape Degradation Factors and the Challenges in Predicting Tape Life” which was published in the Association of Recorded Sound Collections Journal in the Fall of 2008.

Richard Hess on LinkedIn.

THIS MONTH”S MEETING IS SPONSORED BY:
HHB are one of Canada’s pre-eminent professional audio distributors, and Cedar Audio are pioneers in the field of computer based audio restoration hardware and software.

Marshall Chasin – A Potpourri of Ear, Hearing and Hearing Aid Stuff

Tuesday, 27 March 2012
7:00 PM
Ryerson University
RCC 361, Rogers Communications Building, 80 Gould Street, Toronto, ON
Corner of Gould and Church, east of Yonge St (Dundas Subway)
For parking info and map, goto www.ryerson.ca/parking/

Pre-Meeting “Dutch Treat” dinner 5:00 pm at the Pickle Barrel (corner of Edward and Yonge, just north of Dundas, in the Atrium).
This month’s meeting will be available live on-line, courtesy of Ryerson University at www.torontoaes.org.

PRESENTATION:
The meeting will provide an overview of those factors that affect hearing for the audio engineer and performing artist. These factors will be discussed along with strategies, devices, and techniques to minimize the impact of loud music.

BIOGRAPHY:
Marshall Chasin, Au.D.
Musician’s Clinics of Canada
Adult Amplification
Toronto, Canada

Dr. Marshall Chasin is an Audiologist and the Director of Auditory Research at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada in Toronto, the Coordinator of Research at the Canadian Hearing Society, and the Director of Research at ListenUp Canada. He received his bachelors in Mathematics and Linguistics at the University of Toronto.

He is also the Co-ordinator of Research at the Canadian Hearing Society, Director of Research at ListenUp Canada, Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto (in Linguistics) and an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario (School of Communication Sciences & Disorders).
Marshall has been involved with hearing and hearing aid assessment since 1981, having graduated with an M.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, and is the author of over 100 clinically based articles. In 2003, he obtained his AuD from the Arizona School of Health Sciences. Marshall has lectured extensively, and is frequently on TV and radio (he’s the good looking balding guy sometimes on Much Music).
Marshall has won several awards over the years including the 2003 Professional Leadership Award for clinical and research work with musicians and performing artists from the Audiology Foundation of America, the Eve Kassirer Award for outstanding professional achievement from CASLPA in 1991, and Honours of the Association from OSLA in 1999.
Marshall is the author of several books, including “Musicians and the Prevention of Hearing Loss” (1996) “CIC Handbook” (1997), “Noise Control- a primer” (1999)- all published by Singular Publishing Group, San Diego, CA, as well as Hear the Music, 2001, 2006 and a recent book on “Hearing Loss in Musicians”. He has three kids, two cats, and one wife. His website is www.musiciansclinics.com.

It is finally here. DYNAMIC RANGE DAY 2012. Organized by veteran mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, DRD 2012 promises to deliver the message to more people than ever before.

What is the message?

Well, for those who don’t know, over the past several years there has been a movement afoot that has sought to bring attention to the lack of dynamic range in current commercial recordings. By addressing this problem in the music and audio engineering community, Dynamic Range Day brings awareness, education and the creation of standards that will hopefully change the tide of this current aesthetic.

DYNAMIC RANGE DAY draws attention to this growing problem using social media and the power of the global internet community. DRD hopes to affect change by inspiring critical listening and the thoughtful use of audio tools.

You can get more information on DRD here. There is also an open letter to the music industry that can be found here. Click here to find the Dynamic Range Day Facebook page.

Help support a great cause!

Here is an online library of impulse responses from various sources. For those who use convolution reverbs, having a good and varied selection of IR’s is a great way to flavour many different tracks and closely match concert venues.

All reverbs use one of two processing methods, algorithmic or convolution. Algorithmic reverbs use calculations based on hypothetical rooms and spaces to give the reverb its sound. Although it tends to be more artificial sounding, typical of the iconic hardware reverbs of the past 35 years, it is at times the perfect effect required by the music.

Convolution reverbs use pre-recorded samples of real rooms and spaces to build Impulse Response (IR) files of those spaces. The incoming audio signal convolves with the IR to create the reverb sound. Although they require significantly more processing power they are much better at simulating real spaces than algorithmic reverbs.

Popular convolution reverbs:

Altiverb

Space Designer (Bundled with Logic)

Waves IR1

Knufinke SIR1 (Free)

Impulse Response Library’s are all over the internet. Here are two worth checking out to start building your library. The first is a multitude of different sources and can be found here. The other is by Voxengo and includes links to other free plugins as well.

If you have other IR sources feel free to leave the links in the comment section.

One of my favourite things is shooting on set or live show. There is so much that is already done for you and, as a photographer, all you need to capture is the moment. No need to worry about lights, costume, hair, makeup, backgrounds and staging. It’s all there and out of your control anyway as the requirements of the DP usually override any needs the photographer have.

For this shoot on the set of a Quartetto Gelato Music & Magic video, I was using an older Nikon and, because of the low light limitations, needed to use the grain as an aesthetic not an obstacle. The dry ice smoke added to the grain effect which, again, was to my advantage. The costumes, well, they were over the top as was the makeup which made shooting interesting photos a gift.

The other advantage is the lack of needing to prompt people to do something interesting facially or with gestures. This is all built in. You do, however, need to be ready to capture that perfect moment but, the beauty is that, it is usually repeated so there will be another opportunity if you miss it the first time.

The only disadvantage is being quiet, both with your movements and with the camera. Being silent on set is your number one priority. I was fortunate on this set as the music track was being striped in afterwards but in most cases the job requires an external silencer box or a Range Finder camera with a silent shutter.

You can see my photos from the set of the Music & Magic video in my portfolio site, www.flibside.com, or by clicking here.

There is something beautifully organic about handcrafted art jewellery. It has an exclusive, one of a kind, timeless quality to it that can be so compelling. I stumbled across this wonderful site, Corilu Designs, that features this type of jewellery.

All original and crafted by hand so, even if you have a similar style, your jewellery will never be identical to someone else’s. This is even further accentuated if you custom modify a style to your own wishes or have something designed exclusively for you. The priceless nature of the creation is even more apparent but at a price point that is well worth the value for your dollar.

I especially like the muted tones and metals. In some pieces it looks like the sterling silver is almost tarnished and distressed in a well worn antique way. Really lovely! The stones that are used are also beautifully selected for shape and colour. On a side note all the photography of the jewellery is also beautifully done by the designer as well.

You can find the Corilu Design store on Etsy and the designer’s blog here.

I will start off by saying this is not a full scale, hands on technical review. This is from the point of view of a Nikon shooter who has been patiently waiting for something from Nikon while seriously considering making the jump to Canon. With the major releases in the past few weeks from both Canon and Nikon there is much to consider.

Here are the technical specs:

NIKON D800 – $3000
• 36.3MP CMOS sensor
• 15.3MP DX-format capture mode
• 25MP 1.2x Crop mode
• 51-point AF system with 15 cross-type sensors, rated to -2EV* (compared to -1EV)
• ISO 100-6400 extendable to ISO 25,600 equiv. (same as D700)
• 1080p video at 30, 25 or 24 frames per second, up to 24Mbps, with uncompressed HDMI output and audio monitoring options*
• 3.2″, 921,000 dot LCD with anti-fog layer*
• Maximum 4fps continuous shooting in FX mode, 6fps in DX mode**
• Advanced Scene Recognition System with 91,000 pixel metering sensor*
• ‘Expeed 3′ Image Processing*
• Dual-axis Virtual Horizon (on LCD screen/viewfinder)*
* Same or almost identical to Nikon D4
** Maximum frame rate in DX mode is dependant on power source

I will limit the discussion to the D800 as the D4 is intended as a specialist tool for capturing images quickly in all weathers and light conditions, whereas the D800 has been designed to have a much broader potential appeal. The features that it lacks compared to the D4, such as ultra-high ISO shooting, very fast framerates, QXD card compatibility, 2000+ image battery life and built-in Ethernet, might matter to some professionals but are unlikely to be deal-breakers for most of us, especially at twice the price.

CANON 5D MKIII – $3500 ($1000 more that the original MkII)
• New 22.3MP full-frame CMOS sensor with a gapless micro-lenses designed to capture more light
• Individual pixel size is 6.2 microns (compared to 6.4 microns on 5D Mark II)
• ISO 50-102,400 range with on-chip noise reduction
• Digic 5+ image processor
• 61-point High Density Reticular Autofocus System with up to 41 cross-type points and five dual cross-type points (depending on the lens)
• 6 frames-per-second (fps) continuous shooting
• AI Servo III
• Silent and low vibration shooting modes
• In camera HDR capabilities (composites three exposures into one)
• iFCL 63-Zone Dual Layer Metering
• 150,000 cycle shutter durability
• More responsive shutter
• More weatherproof body than 5D Mark II (enhanced dust and weather resistance)
• 3.2-inch Clear View II 1,040,000-dot LCD
• Comparative playback
• 100% coverage in viewfinder with on demand grid
• Dual Compact Flash and SD card slots
• Longer battery life (950 photos on one charge)
• 1-5 star image rating button on back (compatible with Adobe and Apple software)
• Full 1080p HD video at 24p (23.976), 25p, and 30p (29.97) fps
• 720p HD recording at 60 (59.94) and 50 fps
• Eight channel readout designed to double speed of image data for better video quality and 6fps still speed
• H.264 video compression format available to speed up post production work
• Intraframe (ALL-I) compression for easy editing and inter frame (IPB) compression for better data storage
• Two methods of SMPTE-compliant timecode embedding, Rec Run and Free Run
• Ability to video record continuously for up to 29 minutes and 59 seconds across multiple 4GB files
• Internal monaural mic and stereo mic input
• Manual audio level control with 64 levels
• HDMI out
• Headphone jack
• Wind filter

Mega pixel count aside the camera’s are similar. This is what Chuck Westfall, Canon USA’s Technical Advisor in the Professional Engineering & Solutions Division, had to say about the new 5D:

He estimated a “two stop improvement” in noise reduction when shooting JPEGs and HD video with the 5D Mark III. As an example, Westfall claimed that JPEGs shot with the 5D Mark III at ISO 25,600 would be as good as those shot at ISO 6400 on the previous camera. “There’s also much better video quality in terms of decreased moiré and reduced noise,” he added.

RAW images shot with the 5D Mark III will also be cleaner than the previous but not a full two stops better, Westfall said.

The new 61-point High Density Reticular Autofocus System, which is similar to the AF array in the 1D X, should also be a significant improvement. The 5D II’s AF system was slow and out-of-date even at the time it came out.

The D800, on the other hand, shares basically the same form factor as its predecessor the D700. Both models have a built-in flash and lack the integrated vertical grip of Nikon’s top-end DSLRs, which is available instead via an accessory battery grip. There are differences though – some minor, some major.

The most obvious difference from the perspective of core functionality are a massive increase in resolution, from 12 to 36MP, which comes with a significant boost in processing power, and the addition of video mode. The D800′s video mode is lifted almost completely from the professional D4 and boasts 1080p30 resolution with the option to output uncompressed footage via HDMI.

From purely a functional cost effective solution for primarily shooting high quality stills and for having a serious solution for video production here are where the chips fall for me. The main differences that matter:

Megapixels – roughly 36MP vs 22MP. For the first time Nikon has gone after the visceral megapixel race. This certainly does place the D800 in the medium format market and allows for more creative cropping in post while keeping better resolution.

ISO – It looks like the Canon 5D really went after this spec in terms of trying to improve noise and picture quality. Certainly on paper the native and boosted ISO on the Canon out specs the Nikon. How that translates to everyday shooting will be key.

HDMI – While both camera’s support HDMI output, Nikon has gone ahead with an uncompressed signal output. This is very useful and was only available on the Canon as a firmware hack in the previous model.

Autofocus – Canon has really taken a step forward to address the serious autofocus issues with the MKII. It now boasts a 61-point high-density reticular AF (up to 41 cross-type points) system, while Nikon has an Advanced Multi-CAM 3500FX with 51-points (up to 15 cross-type points). I am confident both cameras would perform autofocus duties well.

It will be interesting to see stills and video from both camera’s when they become available to really get a sense as to how they perform. For my needs the higher megapixel count and video support with uncompressed HDMI output is where I believe my dollars will go. This also makes the decision easier as I don’t need to sell all my Nikon lenses. Oddly enough, until the Canon release yesterday, that was very much an option. Let’s see what the photos and video look like.

The Acoustical Renovation of Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Presentation by John O’Keefe

Tuesday, 28 February 2012
7:00 PM
Ryerson University
RCC 204, Eaton Theatre, Rogers Communications Building
80 Gould Street, Toronto, ON
Corner of Gould and Church, east of Yonge St (Dundas Subway)
For parking info and map, goto www.ryerson.ca/parking/

Pre-Meeting “Dutch Treat” dinner 5:00 pm at the Pickle Barrel (corner of Edward and Yonge, just north of Dundas, in the Atrium)
This month’s meeting will be available live on-line, courtesy of Ryerson University at www.torontoaes.org.

After 16 years of design and delay, Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre renovation is finally complete. Throughout that time, two conflicting priorities influenced the acoustic design. The room had to work for the unamplified Vancouver Opera, and the considerably amplified musicals and “soft seat” rock and roll shows that pay the bills 85% of the time. As such, the owner insisted that seat count was paramount. Recently, creative acoustic design has responded to the challenges put forth by increasingly innovative architectural designs.

In the case of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the acoustical challenges were dictated not by the architect but by the owner’s very real concerns about satisfying the acoustical needs of the opera and the need to pay the bills with a high seat count: in the range of 2,750. That meant a very wide room. Responding to this, the acoustical design borrowed ideas from Christchurch Town Hall and Berliner Philharmonie.

In 2007, one third of the construction budget disappeared and a complete acoustical re-design was initiated. The Berliner Philharmonie influence was lost and further emphasis was put on the Christchurch model, using reflectors in the ceiling and strategically located balcony facia reflectors. Using software intended for lighting in green buildings, the orientation of reflectors on the balcony facia was designed to within a single degree of tolerance. The result is a very wide post-war proscenium arch venue that completely covers the audience area with early lateral energy. The owner, the opera and the amplified acts all agree to the success of the renovation.

PRESENTER BIO

John O’Keefe received his Bachelor of Applied Science from the University of Toronto in 1981 then a Masters in Sound and Vibration Studies from Southampton University in 1985. Throughout his 25 year long career, John has channeled his passion for music, science and technology into buildings for the performing arts.

Local examples include the Princess of Wales Theatre, the Young Centre and The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the latter done in association with Soundspace Design. Further afield his work includes the acoustic renovation of Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre and the new Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat and the acoustical renovation of Vancouver’s 2,750 seat Queen Elizabeth Theatre. John is a principal with Aercoustics Engineering Limited and has presented papers and lectures throughout the world. He is the winner of several awards including The Schreyer Award, the country’s highest distinction for engineering.

THIS MONTH”S MEETING IS SPONSORED BY
Aercoustics Engineering Limited