ubk does aes vienna - analog tape replacer, pro-tools killers, tonelux a-range

[u b k]

"it gets smaller every year..." that may well be the unofficial slogan of the aes europe exhibitors. i can't testify to the truth of that (this is my first aes europe), but an old yiddish proverb may apply: if a man tells you 'you look like an ass', smile and carry on. if two men tell you 'you look like an ass,' buy a saddle.

walking thru the aisles, the first thing i'm struck by is how much emphasis there is on post-production compared with music production. digital control surfaces, editing stations, huge plasma monitors, 5.1 arrays, location recording gear... we got 'em in spades.

but high end preamps? beloved compressors? eq's?

* * ** * tumbleweeds ** * * * * * *

i'm not drawing any conclusions, i'm not interpreting the data, i'm just noticing. and wondering. the market for high end is so radically different now than it was 10 years ago, and bears zero resemblance to 40+ years ago. back then, it was white papers and detailed discussions by guys who wore white coats when they hit the red button. they were a tiny, elite guild of craftsmen dedicated to an extremely esoteric pursuit; and they knew the gear because they built it and repaired it as much as they used it.

today, aes is more a marketplace of products and solutions than ideas and techniques, and the target group is mainly comprised of guys with little to no formal training and, quite often, equally little proficiency. this is not a criticism, i'm not harshing --- i believe everyone has an equal right to pursue this craft and i begrudge no one their passion. but whatever the typical pro audio consumer may or may not possess in terms of talent, there is no doubt he has spending power and is exercising it more than ever.

the thing is, with regards to good old fashioned music production, aes appears to be less and less relevant to both the marketer and the marketed. what i'm curious to know is what, if anything, they are doing to shift that reality. are they aware of how radically the climate has shifted? do they have any sense of how to speak to this new breed of engineers, the ones at the vanguard of the democratization of music recording? do they even want to?

i'll leave off at that point, lest i bore the piss out of anyone who innocently popped onto this thread with the reasonable expectation of seeing pretty pictures of sexy gear accompanied by relevant and amusing commentary.

what i have thus far to be posted are videos of the new daking A range module for tonelux in action, the fairlight crystal core daw that utterly stomps pr tools in terms of raw power and ergonomic flow, and some vid of the anamod guys showing their ats tape simulator. speaking of the anamod, now that i've had a second chance to play with this box i'm even more convinced than before that it is nothing short of a miracle. many have tried to replicate the intricacies and chaos of tape, all have fallen short to various degrees. as far as i can tell, these guys have hit the bullseye dead center, and i can't express how much relief that brings me. every time i cue up the studer for another mix, there's a voice in my head asking if this is the last time it'll work, if the days of access to this most incredible of sound tools are truly winding down. i may have found my get out of jail free card. you may be a couple of grand away from printing to the abbey road tube 4-track on the formula of tape favored by miles davis. i still need to hear it in my room on my stuff, but my gut tells me all signs look good.

i've also got various pix of various gear, much of which is familiar to you, some of which is probably not.

so stay tuned. as always, feel free to make any requests for pictures or inquiries for information, and i will oblige. and if you got any perspective on the state and fate of aes, bring it on.


gregoire
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ubk
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[u b k]

digital my pasty white arse!


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[Koed]

Great job UBK.

Our personal GS Vice Cop thumbsup

[Jim Williams]

AES shows used to be pretty big here in LA in the old days when they were combined with SMPTE. SMPTE has since broke off and is with NAB in Vegas, a very big show.

I've suggested to AES that they also join up with NAB and combine, but they seem to want to go off on their own little path to irrelevance as many of the things you now see at AES are post and NAB type stuff anyway.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[3rd world order]

ok.. cool idea... *IF* it does the depth thing... pretty big if... no way to tell without getting one in the room.

why in the hell are they talking about plug-ins? anyone who's into this product knows the plug-ins suck... to compare a product like this to a plug-in is stooping into the gutter..

and why are they talking about experimenting... like i'm gonna blow $2k on an "experiment"...

and why does the designer have such bad hair? shave that ****er...

[u b k]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

ok.. cool idea... *IF* it does the depth thing... pretty big if... no way to tell without getting one in the room.

i'm hoping for this as well. i know for me a big part of the depth is the hiss, and they've got de-correlated stereo hiss in that knob. i know it might be tempting for some to view the hiss knob as a gimmick, but from my own experience hiss is integral to the love that tape brings to the party.

stack 16 tracks of subtle hiss and there's this phantom reality living way in the back of the mix making everything stretch into the horizon; it's bizarre and really cool.

fingers crossed!


gregoire
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ubk
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[eligit]

wow....that is an interesting product there.

what we need now are some monied engineers to do some serious road tests with some top notch A/D. in other words track some stuff with this box in front of the A/D (preferably something high end) and then track the same sources to tape.

seems like an impossible device....but if some current serious "tape heads" do some A/B with their well maintained tape machines....i would be extremely interested in what they come up with.

[jayman]

any info on this new fairlight DAW would be nice...... I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is from their website. --- I probably need to just dig a little deeper, but, can it run on a computer, or only with their current console hardware? They do a good job explaining the details, but not the big picture.

[kyle barton]

UBK, from the video it sounded like the anamod is going to be released with just 2 tape machine simulations, and 2 tape formulations, even though it has the capacity for 4 of each. any clarification on that? and did they give you any feel for when the product would ever be launched? Thanks for continuing to do this. you have the most informative threads on this site. at least they are my favorites.

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by u b k

i'm hoping for this as well. i know for me a big part of the depth is the hiss, and they've got de-correlated stereo hiss in that knob. i know it might be tempting for some to view the hiss knob as a gimmick, but from my own experience hiss is integral to the love that tape brings to the party.

stack 16 tracks of subtle hiss and there's this phantom reality living way in the back of the mix making everything stretch into the horizon; it's bizarre and really cool.

i dont think it's hiss really... if it were that simple it would be easy enough to emulate... geez.. just use dither plug-ins set to 8 bits or something... or blow in 16 tracks of dave hill's "analog" dither noise... how hard could that be?

its something else entirely...

i think it has something to do with data stored in magnetic dust of slightly different sizes and the blur which comes from retrieving it... it'll smear in both the frequency and time domains slightly... combine that by a few million particles every millisecond and you get tape smear.... then add how they react to being saturated, etc... i'm still convinced it's not possible without rust glued to plastic...

but who knows... if a 2U box could give me 4x4 tape sounds, i'm all for it... it would sure save me a lot of money and time in the long run if it worked reasonably well.

but i admit, these boxes fascinate me endlessly... i love putting sounds inside frames... things like this and the thermionic culture vulture get me a lot more excited than mic preamps and plugs.

[3rd world order]

Originally Posted by kyle barton

UBK, from the video it sounded like the anamod is going to be released with just 2 tape machine simulations, and 2 tape formulations, even though it has the capacity for 4 of each. any clarification on that?

the implication is that there's gonna be models released for more than 4 machines and tape kinds....

then you pick your 4 favorites...

i'll take 1/2" ATR 102 please

[kyle barton]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

i'll take 1/2" ATR 102 please

i want the ATR too, but he didn't mention that one during the video (it IS mentioned on their website). hopefully the ATR-model isn't something we are going to have to buy later on as an upsale. that was the reason for my question.

[recall]

I like the look of the anamod any pricing info?

[84K]

I LOVE UBK's VIDEO!! That was hilarious. The under-cover "Blair Witch" vibe to the intro was classic. You Rock UBK!

[Meriphew]

Very cool u b k! Thanks for the vid.

[indie]

u b k...seriously, thank you! I learned a lot about the Tonelux from your video and now Anamod video.thumbsup

[ryst]

Originally Posted by recall

I like the look of the anamod any pricing info?

Accoring to Mix it's $2995 list.

Show Report

"Bomb Factory founder Dave Amels and Pendulum Audio's Greg Gualtieri have formed AnaMod (Anamod Audio, a company that uses analog modeling technology to create complex analog circuitry. Its first product is the ATS-1 ($2,995), a 2-channel analog tape simulator, with user-installable upgrade cards that mimic the sound of different recorders. "

[Jules]

Originally Posted by u b k

walking thru the aisles, the first thing i'm struck by is how much emphasis there is on post-production compared with music production. digital control surfaces, editing stations, huge plasma monitors, 5.1 arrays, location recording gear... we got 'em in spades.

but high end preamps? beloved compressors? eq's?

* * ** * tumbleweeds ** * * * * * *
gregoire
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ubk
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Yeah, but I've felt thats been going for YEARS. There are a load of truely amazing looking consoles, but most of them arent 'for us'. They are designed for film, radio & TV production.

[RoundBadge]

Originally Posted by 3rd world order

why in the hell are they talking about plug-ins? anyone who's into this product knows the plug-ins suck... to compare a product like this to a plug-in is stooping into the gutter..

umm.. ok ..

why?.Because he designed the plug as well.

have you actually heard it?done a comparison?
I'd say anyone who's interested this type of product would be smart to check out the plug side by side with a real tape machine like I did.
I have racks of outboard as well as a 3M M79 and a ATR 1/2 machine.
I'm not a big fan of a lot of plugs out there,but this one actually sounds suprisingly good.
and for 300 bucks .. another useful tool for people who don't have tape machines .
and won't break the bank.

[Brad McGowan]

The plug is only for ProTools at this point?

Brad

[u b k]

i've got some pix of the fairlight gear i'll be posting, but the long and short of it is this: the basic package is around $8000. for that, you get a card and a breakout box.

i'm going from memory so the exact specs may vary slightly, but in essence the box gives you 12 analog outs, 2 mic pre's, 4 s/pdif ins, 8 s/pdif outs, and 2 madi outs, with an optional daughtercard with 4 more madi outs.

the card has a single 'chip', but it's more like a 3-dimensional crystal lattice. it's an fpga, or field programmable grid array, and the beauty of it is that it can be programmed and utilized in any way the programmer desires. so you can take a chunk and make it a 72-bit summing engine; then you can take another chunk and make it a 64-bit realtime dsp engine. and that's exactly what they've done.

the kicker is that this one chip has the rough equivalent of 8 (EIGHT) pro tools accel cards. the way that plays out is that the card can handle over 200 tracks of audio, each with eq, gate, and dynamics. it's set up like a console, there are no plugs to insert. it is also 100% vst compatible with full delay compensation (these run on the host computer), and they are welcoming any 3rd party to develop plugs to run natively on the card. so all your waves and massey plugs can come to the party now, and hopefully some companies with cojones will step out and support a system that's truly designed to make our lives and our jobs better.

but the real beauty of this system has to be seen to be understood. the editing and control surface has an interface that is very gestural in nature, and the operator can "play" the system in realtime. with one hand on the trackball and the other operating buttons and switches, the craziest maneuvers like cutting, pasting, trimming, crossfading, splicing, tweaking, mixing, automating, tweaking plugs etc..., can all be done like a dance, without stopping the music, without the click-select-drag-keycommand paradigm i've always taken for granted.

the operator i saw looked like a clubber on ecstasy the way his fingers and hands were dancing. while the song was playing he made his edits on the fly in time with the music. he would assign sync points, mark a specific slice of time, lift the enclosed regions out of 3 arbitrary non-adjacent tracks, made everything shift to the left to close the gap, and when the right moment came he dropped them back in, everything split and shifted to the right and the copied regions fell into place, and the music never stopped. he then popped open a reverb and adjusted one specific parameter, repositioned the two elements in the 5.1 field, and still the music kept chugging.

it has to be seen to be understood, but the layout of the controls, the way they combine and interact, and the incredible responsiveness of the graphics onscreen (they never lag or stutter, ever) made things possible in a way i never expected.

i love logic, but i now feel like i'm working on a seriously outmoded and antiquated UI. if i were at all in the market for a daw and was thinking of dropping $30000 on a pro-tools blowout, i'd give serious consideration to whether i wanted to buck the status quo, push for real change, and adopt a bold an completely new way of interfacing with computers and music.

or, i could get 8 cards and that digi bundle with 2 year upgrade path.

fairlight. check it out, see a demo if you can, make a move if you dare.


gregoire
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ubk
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[u b k]

what happens if you take the spank of the ssl bus comp, give it the sheeny hifi tone and velvety eq of the elysia mastering compressor, add a few features heretofore never seen in any hardware compressor, and package them all in a gorgeous box that only a visual artist could manifest?

thank god there are young guys out there pushing the envelope on sound while preserving a legacy of tone. this box does creative compression, the kind that until now was reserved for plug-ins. yes, it'll do standard compression too, but you probably won't want to. it has so much punch, i thought my chest was going to cave in when he got the attack and threshold dialed.

this, imo, is the new reigning king of vca SPANK, it sounds fantastic, and it'll make you stretch your understanding and expectations of what compression is and why we use it.

and i only dare to get this geeky in the intro because i love you all so very much.

the blair *what*?


gregoire
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ubk
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[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by u b k

what happens if you take the spank of the ssl bus comp, give it the sheeny hifi tone and velvety eq of the elysia mastering compressor, add a few features heretofore never seen in any hardware compressor, and package them all in a gorgeous box that only a visual artist could manifest?

thank god there are young guys out there pushing the envelope on sound while preserving a legacy of tone. this box does creative compression, the kind that until now was reserved for plug-ins. yes, it'll do standard compression too, but you probably won't want to. it has so much punch, i thought my chest was going to cave in when he got the attack and threshold dialed.

this, imo, is the new reigning king of vca SPANK, it sounds fantastic, and it'll make you stretch your understanding and expectations of what compression is and why we use it.

and i only dare to get this geeky in the intro because i love you all so very much.

the blair *what*?


gregoire
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ubk
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Thanks for doing this dude! Very cool.

So that comp is crazy but... really... for 10 gazillion $ it better be cool. How much does that thing list for again?

[Lownotes]

Great posts! Thanks for taking the time.

[84K]

You Are The Man UBK!! Thanks Again!!

[blaugruen7]

Originally Posted by not_so_new

Thanks for doing this dude! Very cool.

So that comp is crazy but... really... for 10 gazillion $ it better be cool. How much does that thing list for again?

someone mentionend on another thread 5k$.
but this is not official, i think.

[u b k]

i believe the mpressor will go for around $4k.


gregoire
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ubk.

[Stiff]

Thanks for taking your time to do this UBK!

[Nu-tra]

That dude from anamod needs to get rid off that combover! As a bald man i say "Shave it off!"

[bcgood]

"the blair *what*?"

omg lol!

Thanks so much for the Anamod vid as well. It makes me really want to hear it in person or at least hear some A/B samples. Again, very cool videos thanks for the great, informative, funny vids, you rule!

bcgood