AUDIO–HORIZONS 0 New Ideas In Professional Audio From Martinsound Fall 2000 0 - 9 Add Years To Your Console’s Life HELPING YOU STAND OUT by offering products that can significantly extend by enhancing the console you already have. Here is We support those of you the life of your familiar and reliable systems. You an overview of Martinsound products you can add who are keeping classic need to stay on the cutting edge to be profitable, to your existing console. Each one is a proven way but the bleeding edge of large digital consoles is full to attract more business without taking enormous analog consoles in service of pitfalls. Our products allow you to stay current financial risks that could put you out of business. 0 Surround Moving Fader Natural Sound Monitoring Automation Mic Preamps MultiMAX Flying Faders Martech MSS-10 Page 4 Page 6 Page 3 Much more that just a level control. It’s the surround Only Flying Faders added to your favorite console has You have to hear an MSS-⁄O in a familiar listening monitoring controller that replaces the stereo monitor a proven track record of bringing in business. And it environment to know why natural sound takes you section of your existing console. Read why Emmy is now available only from Martinsound, its original into a whole new category - beyond the best tube winner Ed Greene chose MultiMAX and request a developer. See why Sound Kitchen isn’t satisfied with and discrete preamps. If you’re still holding out for a free Report. having only four rooms of flying faders. demo, you can read why Grammy winner Al Schmitt wants a ton of them. Audio Magic From New! 2 Natural Sound Lab PanMAX ACX Natural Sound Report Page 5 Page 7 Page 3 Our new automated surround panner lets you do Need more Flying Fader inputs? Add a Flying Faders The benefits of natural sound go beyond dynamic sound motion and parameter changes. ACX sidecar to your console. If you have more than one pleasureable listening experiences. Hours of PanMAX supports all popular formats, locks to Flying Faders system the benefits are multiplied. Read expensive studio time can be saved, during both SMPTE, and much, much more! how Cherokee uses ACX to book bigger sessions. tracking and mixing, by not having to “fix” the sound of acoustic tracks. Find out How The MSS-⁄O ForMAX and VuMAX Takes Hassles Out Of Tracking And Mixing. As your surround business grows, adding ForMAX and VuMAX will give you the powerful formatting controls and precision VU metering of a full featured surround production suite. ©Martinsound Inc. 2000 All Rights Reserved. Please see trademark notice for terms of use. Audio Horizons | Fall 2000 1 Mail the Reader Response Is Analog Dead? Phone (800) 582-3555 www.martinsound.com by Joe Martinson - President of Martinsound Article summary: Continuing with my Question authority. Adding to your classic analog Joe is also Martinsound’s Chief Audio Pathologist. console instead of replacing it with a digital desk is the morbid review of decay best choice for now. in certain sections of the [email protected] Pro Audio industry such as audio quality, productivity and service, it’s time to do a triage on analog. The question is, has digital finally killed off analog once fortune making consoles? Start with a large fortune. that analog lives! All of our products are designed and for all, or is there lots of life left in natural For digital console makers it seems like they know to help you get the most out of your existing analog signals? they will lose their shirts and pants, but maybe they and digital equipment. Adding Flying Faders to your Back in the mid 1980’s we were working on a are good enough to keep their underwear. favorite console has a proven track record of bringing digitally controlled analog console. We were worried Here is another area where FOTAP is at work. in more business. Our Flying Faders ACX console that in just a few years everyone would be mixing Digital consoles seem to be designed with the expander lets you book larger sessions by adding only on digital consoles and our efforts would be following assumptions: Smaller is better. 48K sample automated channels to your console rather than wasted. Our paranoia was strengthened by rumors rate is all you need. Time delays of up to 100mSec are replacing it with a bigger one. that Ampex had commissioned a study of the future OK in the headphone mix when doing live recording Our Martech MSS-⁄O Natural Sound mic preamp of audio tape recorders. The word was that Ampex or overdubbing. All the features don’t need to work lets you bypass the console and go straight to a was trying to decide whether to continue making now since they can easily be added later with ‘merely’ recorder, preserving the impact and details of the audio recorders and if so should they be analog or a software change. Customers can live with consoles original acoustic performance that are significantly digital. The conclusion was that everyone would stop that crash like personal computers. Fewer controls degraded by even your favorite tube or discrete buying analog multi-tracks and switch to digital since make a console easier to use. The console with the preamp. It’s amazing how much easier it is to record digital audio is perfect. And since digital is perfect, most features wins, regardless of how well it works, and mix great projects if the sound isn’t wrecked no one would upgrade their machines. They assumed how good it sounds or even if anyone wants it! before you even hear it. that around 50 multi-track digital recorders would I’ve heard about the future of audio. It’s assumed With music being given away on the Net, record satisfy the entire world market, forever. that someday everyone will be working over the web. companies are looking for ways to protect their Based on this, Ampex stopped making the popular Artists will phone in their performance and mixers product and offer something new. They are searching ATR-100 and ATR-124 analog audio recorders and will wear virtual reality helmets with built-in sound for profits by re-purposing back catalog material for never built a digital machine. After all, who wants and 3D displays showing the console. What fun. And surround-encoded CDs, DVDs and, soon, DVD-As. to make buggy whips when cars are just around the we can fly virtual jet fighters between takes. Instead of buying a new surround sound console corner. Well, since that time Sony, MCI, Tascam and Hey, I like high tech as much as the next guy to get your share of these projects, add our surround Otari have sold hundreds of analog and digital multi- (OK, maybe a little more), but the idea of having sound solutions to your existing console. MultiMAX tracks. And think of the market for ADATS. So much Wayne using his shrink gun on a console and mixing brings surround monitoring to stereo consoles, for market studies. It seems that the future is much projects using a magnifying glass causes concern. ForMAX gives you resettable formatting, VuMAX adds easier to predict after it happens. What? Aren’t all great records mixed by guys with precision VU metering and our new PanMAX lets you I’m not going to try and predict the future of pocket protectors? do automated surround panning. These integrated analog, but I do want to talk about some commonly What are your assumed premises? How do they components can be added in any combination, held “facts”. It all gets down to a phrase used during affect your business? How can you pick the right allowing you to smoothly grow into a full-featured the OJ Simpson trial, the “Fallacy of the Assumed equipment in a fast changing world? We believe that surround facility. Premise” or FOTAP for short. No matter how good the best choice is to explore all technologies and pick So before sending your tried and true analog logic is, if you start with the wrong presupposition, the one which is right for your application. console to the dumpster, think about the “Fallacy of you will get the wrong answer. The people who did the There is no question that digital recorders are the Assumed Premise”. Do you want to be like every- study made several errors. They assumed that analog getting better as the number of bits and sample rates one else, or do you want to make some money along was dead. They assumed that digital was perfect. They increase and prices drop. And some digital consoles are the way? If you want to make money and have fun assumed that the market was not going to expand. assumed to be amazing bargains. But what happens doing it, we would like to help. By the way, if you have And they assumed that equipment lasts for ever and when you mix on a 48kHz sample rate console and a different view or also question some widely held that people wanted to keep it that long. send it to a 96kHz recorder. Do you wait to get that assumptions, I’m dying to hear from you. My e-mail Honey, I Shrunk the Console. Wayne Szalinski console until it catches up to the recorder? By then is [email protected]. Let me know if may have shrunk the kids in the Disney film, but for recorders may be at 192kHz or based on another you think analog is dead.