BenVersluis.com

Daft Punk toured big in 2007. Justice toured pretty big in 2008 (right?) It’s always interesting to see acts like these play massive shows because, typically, when you see them in a big space they’re not doing DJ sets (Justice still does a fair number of DJ sets).

Keep in mind the kind of music these guys play: heavily formulaic, pre-recorded, processed dance music. I don’t fault them on the formulaic thing - 4/4 at 128bpm can sound really awesome and guys like Justic and DP are at the top of their game making dance music exciting.

But after listening to these guys’ music I had to wonder: how do they pull these things off live? This was, of course, well before I was educated on the staple of these two’s setups: Ableton Live.

That being said, there’s a lot more to their setups than just an instance of Ableton Live running on a MacPro, so here’s a breakdown of the gear and setups I was able to find for these guys.

Justice in Rio 2008 (originally from here)

3x JazzMutant Lemur (link)
2x MacBook Pro
1x Korg MicroKorg (link)
1x Korg ZERO8 Live Control (link)
1x Pioneer DJM800 (link)

Pretty amazing setup. Three Lemurs must be an awful lot of fun to play with, especially live. I’d like to know what they need to different mixers for (the ZERO8 and DJM800). I’m sure they need a few FX returns, right? But what else are being plugged into them? They clearly have labels, it’d be cool to see what they say, though!

Now onto what Daft Punk used for their most recent tour. Some surprising equipment, in my opinion.

1. ABLETON
“The show revolves around Ableton Live software on custom made super-computers, which we remotely access and control with Behringer BCR2000 midi controllers.”

2. SCREENS
“Next to the ethernet remote computer screens there are four Minimoog Voyagers, the classic analog synthesizers. They’re a 30-year old design.”

3. MOOGS
“We can mix, shuffle, trigger loops, filter, distort samples, EQ in and out, transpose or destroy and deconstruct synth lines. We keep some surprises on the side too!”

4. VISUALS
“There’s a direct connection between our rig and the lights and visuals of the show. The light and video engineers can also add or control layers during the show.”

5. SYNTHS
“Inside the pyramid are synthesizers and remote controls connected to the rest of the music equipment and computers, which are in rack-mounted towers off stage.”

6. TEAMWORK
“Working the music equipment, lighting and video equipment, and building the pyramid for each show takes around 10 people, including both of us.”

You may also notice a few Lemur’s, too. Seeing what these things can do live at AES, its very easy to understand why these will soon become to defacto controller of choice for any kind of sequenced, computer-based music. (Above picture and text originally appeared in Mixmag and was found on this site)

My birthday is next week so my fiancee bought me a Nintendo DS. A few weeks earlier, I had imported the Korg DS10 game cart (Japanese version; American version comes out in October according to Amazon). I’ve been playing around with it endlessly for the last week and found it to be a pretty powerful little app.

Neddless to say, it was nice when I saw Kotaku’s story about the DS10 today. It’s about the first “album” produced using the DS10. Check it out here. Among the DS album, you can also find a really nice DJ mix using music performed entirely on the DS10.

The album and the mix are actually very entertaining. They sound like pumped up 8-bit chiptune songs, and with some mixing love I think the tracks coming out of it could be amazing.

I can’t wait to pump some audio out of my DS and into Pro Tools so I can play around with some tracks.

Reamping is one of those recording techniques that I always read about, heard people talking about, and also hear people raving about. It took me awhile to really understand what it was, how to do it, and what it can be used for. I figured I wasn’t the only one that, at one point, was curious and ignorant on the subject of reamping.

Before you reamp, you should probably know what it is. Reamping is taking a signal and stepping up the impedence (from mic level to instrument level) for the purpose of recording an instrument (usually a clean/DI guitar) through a pedal chain or recording the signal through different amps. That’s it. It’s not really that mysterious, is it?

But, before we go on, you should read this disclaimer: please, before buying a remap box and getting stoked on doing this, check out your cable situation. Seeing as most interfaces have TRS outs and all reamp boxes have either male/female XLRs in, you really need to make sure you have the proper cables before attempting this. And no, taking the output of your interface into an amp or pedal chain will not sound as good. Not even close.

Reamping is, essentially, three steps that anyone familiar with the world of recording should be able to handle. But, in case you’re confused, here are those three essential steps:

1. Route your audio out of your selected DAW (in this tutorial, Pro Tools 7.4 HD) and take the output of your interface (in this case we used interface out A3 of our 192 I/O) and plug it into the input of your reamp box. In the case of this tutorial, we sent the DId guitar and snare out of an aux on the SSL 9000, so our outputs on the panel were Cue Output #1. You will probably just take whatever oupute of your interface out right into the reamp box (no patching or auxes necessary). Pictures: The 9K / Sending Signal Out of Pro Tools / Output of the Wall Panel / Input of Our Reamp Box
2. The next step is to take the output of your reamp box (1/4″ cable) into your amp or pedal chain.
3. If you’re reamping into an amp, then all you would need to do is run the 1/4″ into your amp, play the audio back and simply set up a mic and record the result on a new track. In our case, we needed to take the signal from the pedals and turn it back into a mic signal to record into Pro Tools. All we needed to do to accomplish that is take the output of the pedals into a DI and then back into the wall panels. Pictures: Output of Reamp Box / DI Input / DI Output / Input of the Wall Pane

That’s all there is to reamping. It’s not a horrifically difficult task…it’s just a little confusing if you’re not sure what it is or how to do it.

I recorded some samples of what reamping CAN sound like. The first sample is an example of reamping a bass signal thru our pedal chain. The second example of what reamping a snare can sound like.

So, as you can see, you can really alter the tone of your tracks (bass or otherwise) via reamping. If you’re interested in doing this, do it. It’s a lot of fun.

While you’re at it, why not go discuss this topic (or others) in the forums?

Have you ever heard of Soundscape? I sure haven’t. But after reading the latest issue of Tape Op (Soundscape was mentioned in an interview), it made me want to check out their website.

If you’re not familiar with this program, don’t worry. Most of the US isn’t. Soundscape is the anti Digidesign in the sense that they don’t require you to buy controllers for their hardware, nor do you only have to use RTAS/TDM-type plugins (Soundscape runs off VST and VSTis as well as DSP-dependant plug-ins). I’m not sure that Soundscape utilizes DX plug-ins.

The selling points for Soundscape are (1) zero latency, (2) complete freedom of routing; you can route anything anywhere [according to the maker's website], (3) the program and hardware are supposedly extremely stable [in the Tape Op interview, the engineer who was describing Soundscape said he's had his computer crash and had Soundscape still chug on recording]. If this is all true, why isn’t Soundscape more present in the US?

Oh, that’s the other selling point (depending on who you are): Soundscape operates soley on DSP chips. None of your PC’s (yes, its a PC program) resources are ever used. All plug-ins and processing are done on DSP chips that you can buy.

Apparently Soundscape is a big presence in Europe. I’m willing to bet Digidesign’s marketing army won’t let that be the case in the US.

If you’re interested (and hopefully you are), check out the maker’s, Sydec, website here.

Developer Cavia showed the Korg DS-10 at this year’s E3 in LA. The DS-10 is a Nintendo DS copy of the famous Korg MS-10. You can connect up to 8 DSes together via ad hoc wireless to have one giant synth jam sessions!

The software features the full range of musical notes, which is pretty amazing. You can also create songs from one to five minutes long.

The DS-10 will also feature Korg’s Kaoss Pad so you can endlessly tweak your sounds.

It’d be really cool if they could integrate some type “export” feature for this. Maybe they can integrate this somehow with the Wii so you can create music and then drop it on that system? Either way, if I buy a DS, I will buy this.

You can check out this preview video for the DS-10:

NHK Science and Research Labs received a 600 channel Fairlight Constellation console in April for research on their 3D surround sound system (22.2).

The format is just one half of NHK’s Ultra High Vision (UHDTV) which features high resolution video alongside 20 speakers and stereo subs.

The resolution for the video is outstanding: 7,680 x 4,320 (4320p) which is four times that of existing HDTV (resolution of 1,920 x 1,080). NHK hopes for this to be the international standard for ultra hi-def by the year 2015. Seeing as it’s a good way into 2008 and HD is just becoming affordable enough for the average consumer to afford, is 2015 really accurate for something of this magnitude? I guess we’ll see!

Its said that 4320p will be able to scale with 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and 2160p. The codec that NHK has developed (and used during their most recent tests) was able to compress video from 24Gbit/s to 180-600MB/s (that’s a pretty broad range, maybe its a VBR codec?), while audio was compressed from 28MBit/s to 7-28MBit/s.

Now, to what us audio nerds really care about: the audio component to this new HDTV standard. Its 22.2 and is made up of three layers: upper, middle, and lower. The upper level is nine speakers above ear level; the middle level is ten speakers at ear level; the lower level is five speakers below ear level. Check out the breakdown:

• Upper Level:
• Top Front Center
• Top Back Center
• Top Front Left
• Top Back Right
• Top Side Left
• Top Side Right
• Top Back Left
• Top Back Right
• Top Center

Just got my June update from Digidesign. Sounds like some pretty big things have come out this month/will come out by the end of the month. Some talking points:

• Transfuser: is now available (according to the newsletter). If I were into any sort of electronic music production/”beat making,” this looks like it’d probably be my go-to plugin. But then again, that’s me talking without any real experience with stuff like Kontakt, Battery, or the like. Regardless, this plugin has a ton of features and looks pretty amazing. I’ve had good times with some of Digi’s other sampling utilities/instrument plug-ins (mainly Structure and Strike), so I wouldn’t mind playing around with this one. And it looks like this is the full version, not the beta/free trial that’s been on their site for a little bit now. You can read my previous article about Transfuser here.
• Pro Tools 7.4 on Leopard: I’ve had the great time of playing around with PT HD 7.4 on the only Leopard machine at Expression and, to be honest, it hasn’t been that bad. Granted, there’s been a few crashes and lock-ups, but I have those problems on HD with Tiger systems. I’m sure June has been a time for PT users on Leopard to rejoice, and rightfully so. You can read my previous article about 7.4 on Leopard here.
• ICON D-Command ES: First and foremost, I do consider myself as sort of a Pro Tools fanboy (if you couldn’t tell already). But seriously. I do not enjoy my interaction with the D-Command or the D-Control: I know it’s supposed to streamline your efficiency while using Pro Tools, but I just don’t care. The only super positive thing I can say about the new ES models of the Command/Control is that they’re black. And I like that. But honestly, is the money for one of those things really worth it? No audio even passes through it!

So there it is. Between Transfuser and 7.4 being able to run on Leopard, I’d say it’s been a pretty good month for Pro Tools fans. There’s a few things in the newsletter that I didn’t cover. One of them being news about a program called Sibelius First. To me, it sounds like Sibelius Lite, or a GarageBand version of Sibelius if you will. So if you’re a composer, check it out.

Expression College recently opened their new room, Studio 2. It was designed to be a hybrid tracking/mixing/mastering room (in fact, it’s the only room at the school that is deemed as a mastering room).

It is, of course, a Pro Tools HD3 rig running on OS X Leopard with a Control 24 and a whole bunch of outboard gear. Custom ATC monitors, too.

The room was designed by Walters-Storyk Design Group and tuned by Bob Hodus.

I had the pleasure of doing some mixing in there last night and took some pictures of the room. There’s 2 iso booths I didn’t bother getting, but they’re just iso booths so you won’t miss anything.

Notice: The pictures I took are each around ~1mb a piece (some slightly smaller), so just know that as you’re scanning through the photos.

Neve 1073
ATC Monitor
Chandler Germanium EQs
API Lunchbox (EQs and Comps)
Manley 16×2 Mic and Line Mixer
Manley Massive Passive and Waves MaxxBCL
Speck Line Mixer
Chandler TG1 Comps/Limiters
Chandler TG2 Pres
Manley Vari Mu

And, last but not least, a picture of the entire studio.