HEADING SOUTH

It was a golden opportunity. The Australian Antarctic Division posted a job listing for a Communications Technical Officer to work on radio and satellite communications on the Davis base over the course of a summer season. Andy applied, and his skills and experience in electronics won him the role. But he was most excited about his plans off-the-clock during his Antarctic stay, using the opportunity to capture the fascinating, peculiar, and largely unrecorded sounds of the frozen continent at the bottom of the globe.

And the goal? To build a comprehensive Antarctica sound library.

“If you Google ‘Antarctic sound library’, you don’t get much. I think there is a lack of really special sounds from Antarctica because it’s such a difficult place to get to. I want to help people be creative with some of these really special animals and sounds that you’re just not going to get anywhere else. So now I have 40GB of wonderful recordings that I’m currently processing to publish in a sound library.”

I caught up with Andy to learn more about his Antarctic adventures.

LIFE ON STATION

AT: What type of work did your Communications Technical Officer role in Antarctica involve?

AL: I was at a location called the Vestfold Hills on Davis Station. Everything we do there is to support science and research in Antarctica. There are frequent field trips out to do measurements of lakes, penguin counting, maintenance trips to field huts, things like that. All of these parties require radios, backup radios and safety communication systems to make sure everyone is okay, and we have check-in protocols in place so that the station leader and everyone on station know the people out in the field are safe.

On top of this there’s a satellite system on station for communications back to Australia. That carries all of our communications, the Internet, anything external to the stations goes through this satellite system. That needs to be maintained as a matter of importance because if you lost that all you have is voice communication via HF radios, which is much less reliable. Both of these systems are maintained by the station communications technical officer.

AT: So you did all your location recording in between shifts?

AL: Yes, I would go out almost every day, every chance that I could because I didn’t want to miss anything. Things are constantly changing with the seasons there so there’s something different everyday.

I’d sneak out either super early in the morning or as soon as work finished and go on a five-hour mission to record the elephant seals again, or the emperor penguins, and it’s usually about a 12km round trip. I’m out there with my 20kg survival pack plus audio gear walking through the rocky Vestfold Hills covered in snow and ice. They’re also covered in these things called dikes which are dried lava systems that look like black highways running through the rock. It’s this landscape of brown rock covered in giant black lava roads that you’re walking through with ice and snow. Eventually you start hearing the belches of the elephant seals – they are so loud, you’re not going to miss them. They weigh up to 3600kg. I’d find a great place to set up and record them for hours before heading back to station.

What’s difficult is it’s so cold. The wind will pick up, my fingers are freezing, my face is all red and covered in snow, but as I’m going back there’s always little things that make me want to stop and unpack all my gear and set up again. I’d pass some skua birds circling overhead – they’re scavengers, and they’ll fly directly over your head just checking if you’re alive. Getting their cries is rare as well. Or I’d walk past some baby storm petrels and set the gear up to record their cries. They’re hidden amongst the rocks and you’ll never lay eyes on them because they’re hiding from the skuas. So it was this constant battle of going back to station and getting warm again, or staying out another hour and recording these beautiful creatures.

SOUND DECISIONS 

Antartica’s summer climate of -15° to 5°C makes very specific demands of audio equipment. Batteries don’t last as long, small amounts of moisture quickly turn to ice, vibrations travel through ice for kilometres, and high speed winds can obstruct clean recordings. 

These are struggles Andy knows all too well. With no retail stores nearby, every item of audio gear he took on the trip was selected carefully.

AT: What’s in the bag when you go out recording?

AL: Because I’m travelling long distances in the cold with 20kg+ on my back with three or four layers of clothes, I don’t want to carry too much. So I have a single Manfrotto stand which is very compact and light, about 1kg. It has studs on the bottom so it sits in the snow without moving and I can mount a pair of mics on a stereo bar on it. I carry two Aquarian H2d hydrophones for underwater recording, two DPA 4006 omni condenser mics, two DPA 4060s, a Zoom H8 with a backup SD card, two mic leads for my stereo setup, and a Zoom H5 backup recorder which I never had to use. I also have wind protection for the mics.

AT: Why did you pick the Zoom H8 as your field recorder?

AL: I was particular about which recording device I used. I talked with the guys at Dynamic Music and there was a shortage of F3 and F6 recorders at the time. What was available to me was the H8 – they were saying it’s been taken to Everest and were quite sure it would work out well. They got it to me at really short notice which was wonderful. It’s just super rugged – it survived Antarctica, it’s survived the desert in India. I’m very impressed with how it handles the conditions, the wind, the snow, the ice, the cold. Even wearing gloves all the time it’s responsive.

The H8 has six XLR inputs. I would use four max. I have some really nice recordings where I have submerged a pair of hydrophones off the edge of some sea ice – I walk over to the edge carefully and pop the hydrophones a few metres apart and a few metres down – and then I’ve also set up a pair of DPA 4006s. That lets me capture what’s happening below the ice and above the ice at the same time. I was able to get penguins coming out of the water, landing on the ice, and making some noises – you can hear things like their footsteps above and below.

AT: Tell me about your microphone choices.

AL: I didn’t want to go cheap on microphones and find the diaphragm starts to ice up or the electronics inside aren’t insulated well enough to stop the circuit board from cracking. The DPA 4006s are wonderful for soundscapes and I know they’ve been taken to Mars before so they’re going to do okay in Antarctica.

The Aquarian H2D hydrophones have a small capsule. They’re not super high end but they’re very rugged and that’s what I went for going into Antarctica. The Weddell seals make some absolutely crazy sounds underwater, it sounds like Star Wars down there. It’s like a sine wave sweep from 20kHz down to 100Hz and it’ll go for 30 seconds, they make these laser sounds, it’s insane.

The sea ice melts through the Antarctic summer and it’s about 1.5m thick in the location where I was. I was capturing the sound of it melting. I’d use this huge drill that’s about 2m long to drill down into the sea ice and pop the hydrophones in. You can hear lots of little cracks and every now and then these epic loud ones as the temperature of the sea water changes enough for the ice to crack.

The H8 was great for two main reasons. Obviously I was very impressed with its durability, but secondly, it’s a handy recorder. I had the standard Zoom XYH-6 mic capsule in my pocket as I was walking about to grab sounds I didn’t have time to set up for. If the H8 wasn’t a handy recorder I wouldn’t have captured the skua calls or some of these really special moments that I needed to be prepared for.

POINT & SHOOT

AT: What’s your typical microphone configuration?

I record everything in stereo with my mics in omni set up in A/B configuration. I sometimes changed the capsules on the DPAs to adjust the EQ curve depending on what I was recording. Using omni means I can eliminate proximity effect and it’s brilliant for soundscapes.

There are very few places in the world where you can go and find zero unwanted noise – there’s always going to be some kind of human activity. Even in some deserts you’ll still hear noises of cattle or goats or a plane overhead – it’s super difficult to find a location like Antarctica where there is pretty much zero unwanted noise. That’s why the omni mics worked so well, because I didn’t mind where the sound sources were coming from, they’re all magic.

AT: That means the only noise-making factor is you?

AL: Yes, I’ll usually just be sitting there silently with a smile. But it was a challenge because if it’s especially cold or windy I’m wearing my wind protection, and anything that’s windproof is the noisiest thing on the planet. So I’d either sit there super silently or I’d go for a walk while the gear was recording.

AT: Do you use headphones for monitoring?

AL: Maybe 50% of the time. The reason I didn’t bring them sometimes is just because of their weight and because they’re fragile. Initially I would plug in some headphones to check the stereo field, check the distance from the sound source, maybe the height of the mics, but it’s something I did less as I got to know my equipment more.

AT: What was your most memorable moment?

AL: Probably the most surprising and fun moment was when I once left all the gear out recording while I went to have dinner on station. I came back about an hour later and there was a couple of penguins wandering about my gear – these Adelie penguins are really curious. As I was getting closer I could see the hydrophone leads had been shifted and one of the hydrophones had been pulled out of the water – I’d left it two metres deep and it was now three metres on the ice. And I’ve got all this recorded above the water and below. When the penguins are moving the mics the hydrophones are full of noise but you can tell there’s a little group of them and they’re just yelling at each other and having fun.

ANTARCTIC SOUND LIBRARY

Andy is in the process of cleaning up and collating his hours of Antarctic audio into a specially curated sound library which will be available on his website: www.outthereaudio.com.

“The sound library is going to be almost everything I have recorded. It includes things like Emperor penguins, Adelie penguins, Weddell seals, elephant seals, the birds of Antarctica like skuas and storm petrels. I also got the sounds around the station which are really cool. The satellite dome at the station is made up of something called Tevlar and it’s a bunch of irregular shapes that come together to create a dome that protects the satellite dish from snow and wind. Inside this dome sounds absolutely insane so I took an impulse response from inside the dome. I have lots of soundscapes like the Antarctic wind, the sound of the Antarctic ocean, the beach, the swell, ice cracking, walking on ice, walking on snow – I tried to get everything I could.”

outthereaudio.com
zoomcorp.com
dynamicmusic.com.au

GW: Oh, that must have been tough.

SM: Yeah. So I went around to all the other studios in LA with my resume. I knocked on every door in person. Everywhere. Conway, Paramount, Capital, the Record Plant, and I didn’t hear back from any of them. Three months later I got an email from The Village saying ‘Hey, come and work with us.’

So I went there and started as a coffee boy. I did that for maybe eighteen months, and six months in I was assigned to a mixing session with the legendary mixer Ed Cheney. Then I started doing more sessions with musicians. There were full rock band and vocal sessions. At that time there were a lot of film composers mixing at The Village because they had the Neve 88R console which has a great master panel for mixing in 5.1. It’s a sweet sounding console, especially for strings and acoustic instruments.

I was assigned to these mixing sessions, and because I spoke the ‘classical’ language and the ‘jazz’ language — which many of these composers speak — I was able to communicate well with them and they started requesting me. That’s how I met the composer Thomas Newman, and how I worked with him on the movie Wall-E. This was in 2006, and at that time I was actually the main engineer’s assistant’s assistant.

GW: Right. So what were those sessions like?

SM: Back then Thomas Newman sessions were very big. A lot of TV monitors for the bar count; lots of musicians; lots of takes. Nowadays we do all this at Thomas’ private studio but back then, at The Village, he would sometimes camp out for a week or so and do these ‘idea sessions’. Maybe four or five musicians in the studio, and we’d do a lot of taiko drums, percussion and electric guitars. He’d say, ‘Hey, this is what I have. Could you just give me an interesting sound? Or how about this kind of sound here, this kind of rhythm here? Try playing that shaker here’. When we do a movie we do a lot of that —throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

GW: That sounds like a really fun process.

SM: Yeah it’s fun, though sometimes it’s an engineering nightmare because it’s a combination of tracks, then muting things and then rerecording again. We have to keep track of what we’re recording. Sometimes it’s quite crazy.

GW: So how did you progress from assistant’s assistant to being Thomas’ main engineer, mixer, and collaborator?

SM: During my assistant era from 2007 till around 2012 I was more in the background: patching things; watching to make sure everything was okay; setting up the console; and making sure Tom and the mixer were comfortable. Then around 2012 Tom asked me if I wanted to work with him more closely as a recording engineer and a creative partner.

At that time he didn’t like his writing set-up and he was getting ready to build his own studio. So somehow he asked me, ‘Hey, I don’t like my writing set up do you want to design my studio?’ So I ended up designing his studio and spending a lot of his money! That’s the studio we still use today. So that was the start of a very close relationship with Tom.

I’m still in charge of mixing, and also sometimes in the recording stage to make sure everything sounds right. I make sure all the recordings are translating his ideas. Because you’re recording so much material, it does get quite uncomfortable if the progress mixes aren’t done right. That’s a very important part of the process.

GW: Because you’re building a lot of layers?

SM: A lot of layers, and then subtracting layers, and adding layers again — trying different layers in the same foundation. Yep. His working method is very flexible and fluid which sometimes makes it difficult to keep up as an engineer because he’s always trying to be loose. He’ll want to go left, and you go left and you make it sound really nice. He’ll say, ‘Okay, this is great.’ And then he decides, ‘Oh, just go right.’ I just went left for three hours and now you want to go right? But that’s all part of how he works. He’ll let it sit for a few hours, or maybe even a few days. He doesn’t compromise when he wants to experiment. He definitely tries until the end to go in different directions. The production process is the repetition of that process, over and over until mixing.

GW: With A Man Called Otto, were there pre-production discussions about the the style of the music, and the style of the mixing for this particular film?

SM: The director Marc Foster and the editor Matt Chesse are very collaborative people. They’re very relaxed and I don’t think there was a particular style discussed, but I think Tom wrote a few demo cues. Mark really liked one cue, a pizzicato string thing. It’s a little bit light and comedic. That pizzicato sound ended up being one of the main drivers of the music in this movie.

The challenge we had was that although the message is still serious with this guy — who just lost his wife six months ago trying to commit suicide over and over — we still wanted to create a slightly lighter feeling. He’s a very repetitive, rigid, kind of systematic guy. I think that the patterning and phrasing in the music helps describe him, while also being a little bit light.

GW: Let’s talk about the attempted suicide scene with the shotgun. That must have been a challenging cue to mix as there’s quite a lot going on there.

SM: That cue started with this very chaotic loop which was created by a great musician called Steve Tavaglione. He played flute and saxophone for George Duke, George Benson and Prince… all the legends. He creates special sounds for Tom. He made this really interesting, confusing loop that kind of goes inside Otto’s brain.

He’s very confused by his situation, going back and forth between the present and an old memory with his wife at Niagara Falls. So I tried to keep everything narrow with the image down the middle. I didn’t expand it too much, so everything is focussed on him. When the scene hits Niagara Falls with his wife we see this huge open scenery, and from that point I really opened up my image to all the surround speakers. I used a lot of delays to create this kind of wave in the stereo image. I created a delayed reverb so the sound sweeps over the audience. When the wife is there I wanted to surround the audience with the strings and other orchestration.

GW: The score in general has a lovely warmth to it. How do you make sure that comes across in the mixing stage?

SM: Tom Newman generally uses very lush orchestration. I try to enhanced it by having a big, rich, low end. At the same time you want to hear the top end detail, but if you boost the highs too much, and get a lot of brightness, the music will conflict with the dialogue. When that happens it’s a natural response for the dubbing mixer to turn the music down so you have to be careful with the top end.

When I mix the score I always keep that in mind. I don’t lose too much of the high end, but I have to make it right. The high end of the strings and the low end of the strings are very important.

GW: This dual role that you have in A Man Called Otto — of editing the music and also mixing the score… Is that something you’ve done before?

SM: It was kind of an accident. I never thought I would be a music editor to be honest. I always had an interest in it, but the pandemic changed everything. When the lockdowns hit, because of the new limitations we really had to find new ways of working. After we did 1917 we were already experiencing a lot of changes in our production process, and then the pandemic started. Tom said ‘Why don’t you music edit too? I think you know my style and my intentions well enough to represent my music in the dubbing stage’. So we tried it and we got a great outcome.

Since then I’ve been doing both. It’s sometimes tough, physically, but it’s good because you have more control, and it actually makes both roles easier in a way. When a new project starts, I’m in every single meeting with the director and Tom. So I totally understand what Tom’s intention is. At the same time I understand what the director’s intention is, so I can mix with both perspectives in mind — which I think is a huge advantage for me. When I go to the dubbing stage, I know every single element of the music. And I know exactly how Tom wants to hear the music on screen — which is sometimes different at the dubbing stage, with the sound effects and the dialogue being refined.

My role there is to make sure Thomas’ intentions always translate. Because I’ve done the mixing it makes it easier to sonically understand what’s going on with the music. I can say ‘Hey, could you bring down the shaker a little bit because I mixed it too high.’ Or ‘I think we need to boost the low end a little bit here.’ So in that way, yes, it’s a great advantage.

GW: What about the songs in the movie? Are you doing the editing on them as well?

SM: We do, yeah. Sometimes I get an assistant to do that because usually picture editors do the initial edits on the songs. Sometimes they’re a little bit sloppy and not on tempo. A lot of times I don’t have access to the stems, just the stereo tracks. I don’t generally touch the end title song, but yeah… if we need to edit, we can edit.

GW: What is your mixing set up in terms of equipment?

SM: Since the pandemic we use the ATCs. Tom has the larger ATC 100s in his studio, and I have a smaller room so I have the ATC 50s, with a subwoofer for bass extension, and PMCs at the back. I have a Pro Tools HD3 system with an Apple Mac Studio Ultra, which I just bought and really love. Thomas and I are networked via via Source-Connect. He can listen to my mixes at his studio and do approvals that way. It’s amazing.

That’s another outcome of the pandemic. Before, at a studio like The Village, Tom would have to come down there and spend half a day waiting for the mixes to come up. To check everything he’d have to commute, which is a nightmare in Los Angeles. Now I’ll do a one and a half hour mix session and he’ll be playing with his dog or doing some composition work at his home studio. I’ll text him, ‘Hey, I’m ready for you.’ Then we’ll go over it.

We’ll spend an hour or two on it and then I’ll go away and prep the next cue. The time he spends now is very efficient and he doesn’t need to travel all over town. I’m here almost every day of my life so I know exactly how it sounds in this room, and I know exactly how my mixes will translate in the dubbing stage because I’ve already done six movies like this.

GW: Coming from a jazz and classical background you no doubt bring a little bit of that aesthetic to your production work. It’s obviously a great fit with Tom’s compositions.

SM: I think we somehow share the same values in music. There’s a common link there which is the reason he trusts my sensibility. It’s been a wonderful journey. I never expected to have such a deep relationship with Tom, so it’s been great.

AudioTechnology was given the rare opportunity to sit down with Daniel Sennheiser for an exclusive interview while he was in Sydney, as part of his post-Covid tour of APAC markets.

Daniel revealed the current state of play in the region, sharing his insights on how the pandemic accelerated the audio industry. Following the sale of Sennheiser’s consumer division, we dived into the strategic realignment of the Sennheiser business to focus on its pro audio, business communications and Neumann business units. Looking to the future, Daniel shared his take on 3D audio, and what’s to come next in that space.

You can view the full video of the interview here. The following is an abridged transcript of that interview edited for AudioTechnology.

Christopher Holder: I know you’ve been on an APAC tour, visiting markets such as Japan and Korea as well as Australia. Do you still notice distinctive market differences or are those peculiarities disappearing? 

Daniel Sennheiser: Certain things are specific to certain markets, for example, the Central Asian markets have their own rules and perceptions. That said, globally we see, increasingly, the markets coming together, with increasingly similar products and production methods. So there aren’t many differences at all. 

CH: I imagine this trip is the first to this region since COVID. What are your reflections on Covid as co-CEO of Sennheiser?

DS: Covid resulted in some business changes, like the live audio business, the theatre business and others, going down for a while. At the same time, we saw other businesses, like the home studio and content production businesses go up significantly. It was a surprise to everybody to what extent it actually did. There was no way of predicting how the market responded.

CH: Right. Some of that demand was beyond extraordinary. Has it permanently changed the market?

DS: It didn’t completely change the market because some of those trends were already ongoing, but it accelerated it. Ten years ago, content production was a very professional pursuit, requiring a full team. Today, everybody is a content producer, and that was hugely accelerated. At the same time, musicians or artists who couldn’t go on tour or those who were usually out in professional productions, they now stream from home and used the time [during Covid] to create new productions. 

CH: When Covid lockdowns hit, everyone became a Zoom or Teams native almost overnight. That said, the audio could be horrific. What was your response to hearing what we were putting up with, even on national TV? 

DS: It was interesting to see how what we were willing to put up with to get the conversation across, but I think to really create a connection, the audio quality has to be better. And very often I was thinking, okay, it doesn’t take a lot to improve the audio quality here. Sure enough, people started to upgrade, then everybody saw how it could be better and word got around. We saw a significant upgrade in audio equipment on one side and democratisation in content production on the other side. 

Daniel Sennheiser (right) with co-CEO Andreas Sennheiser. The brothers joined forces to the lead the family business back in 2013.

HEADPHONES GRAND SALE

CH: You sold your consumer headphone division recently. What was behind that decision?

DS: We looked strategically at all four of our business units at the time [Consumer Audio, Pro Audio, Business Communications and Neumann] and we developed strategies for each of them, realising that there are great opportunities for all four business units. Our next step was to think: how can we really drive and maximise those strategies? We saw that we had limited resources to focus on the businesses that we were leading — particularly our Pro Audio, Neumann and Business Communications divisions. As a privately-held, family-owned company with an engineering-minded workforce, we decided that the consumer business and especially the consumers themselves would be better served by a different owner. So, as a result, we believe it is better for our customers that we focus on these business areas so that we can bring even stronger solutions to market in those fields.

CH: That’s good news for audio people, but do you have any regrets?

DS: No, absolutely not. It was a difficult decision. I am going to be honest about that. The consumer business bears my family name. It was Sennheiser who invented the music headphone, the HD414 in 1968. We were specialists in that field, but today it’s not a specialist market anymore. Other rules apply. It’s a huge market that has exploded and we believe we are better in niche markets where there’s a very clear benefit for the customer. The customer is seeing the use of our products and the German engineering. And as a result, the consumer business is better served in a different way. It was a difficult decision, but I see the results already on the pro side being very positive.

CH: How so?

DS: Coming out of the pandemic, the professional audio business is growing again significantly, and we as a company are growing significantly. We have a lot of control over our supply chain, has been an advantage this year as supply disruptions are happening everywhere. We didn’t have a major disruption because we produce everything ourselves and we have a very deep understanding of the different components. That was a strategic decision we made several years ago, and we are now seeing the fruits of that.

CH: Did you have to retool for the shortage of components?

DS: Oh, yeah. And that’s a constant over the past three years, actually. We see that getting slightly better now, but a significant part of our R&D workforce used their skills to design new components that were available. As a result, we didn’t have any major disruptions.

NEUMANN IN THE FAMILY

CH: Sennheiser purchased Neumann back in 1991 and still runs as a separate business unit. What are the differences between Sennheiser and Neumann that set them apart?

DS: Neumann is very much a heritage brand, which doesn’t mean that it’s not innovative — Neumann made the first digital microphones… which were probably ahead of its time.

CH: Solution-D.

DS: Yeah, exactly. And now finally the market is ready for that. Neumann really explores innovation but brings it in a very classic way to the market. For example, the new Miniature Clip Mic system is a true music capsule that has Neumann’s signature sound. It’s absolutely the reference for close miking instruments live, but very much based on recording and the studio. Whereas, at Sennheiser, we have DNA that is also rooted in the broadcast field as well as the music industry. Sennheiser is probably designed to be a bit more rugged. For example, you can find an MKH microphone that is sitting outside on a ski slope for two weeks and it’s working perfectly at -20°. You couldn’t do that with a Neumann as it should be stored in a humidity-controlled cabinet. So, there are different applications, different uses, and different signature sounds to both brands. And that’s why we keep them apart. We have a lot of customers that own both brands for different applications, and they choose the best tool for that production.

3D AUDIO FUTURE

CH: Sennheiser is a 3D audio pioneer, and it feels immersive audio’s time has finally come. Where is Sennheiser currently at with immersive and 3D audio?

DS: Our mission is to build the future of audio. And we’ve done that since 1945 for Sennheiser and since 1928 for Neumann. If you always try to look ahead and create new innovations, you need to be ahead of the curve. We did a lot of research in the field of spatial audio. Back in the ’70s we brought out the dummy head recording mic — actually, both Neumann and Sennheiser did.

For example, while The Beatles were recording Sgt Pepper’s at Abbey Road in mono, bands like Pink Floyd were recording in binaural 3D audio. It wasn’t a big success at the time because the market wasn’t asking for 3D audio yet.

You’ve now got the rise of virtual reality, 3D audio, and the metaverse on one side, and also the consumer who is looking for more 3D audio because it’s just a more natural experience. Instead of listening to channels, you’re actually listening to a sound object in space. And that’s how our human brain and hearing work. So, immersive audio just feels more natural.

We have always believed it will one day come. As a privately owned company, we can afford to believe in it and keep on going with it.

CH: Right. You can afford to have some passion projects.

DS: And this curiosity is very much ingrained in our DNA. We are always challenging the status quo. My grandfather, Fritz, who founded the company, was a scientist. He was not an entrepreneur, initially. And that scientific approach to everything we do is still there. We do a lot of research which doesn’t necessarily have an immediate application, but we understand better audio this way. We understand materials and then processes, and as a result, that intense science work leads to a more intense audio solution, which in the end leads to more intense emotions because that’s what audio is all about.

CH: With the likes of Dolby Atmos Music gaining momentum, how does Sennheiser benefit?

DS: I think we do benefit from it because we have a lot of research in that field. We have AMBEO recording standards. In virtual reality, we have wonderful software that allows you to create 3D content in space. Then there’s Dolby Atmos being a standard in a lot of productions. For example, in some Netflix productions, we created an algorithm that is using AMBEO two-channel spatial audio to create a binaural stereo signal which is much more immersive than the standard stereo signal. In many of the new Netflix productions, you’ll have the Sennheiser-enhanced stereo because most people listen on traditional stereo devices. So, if you compare, for example, Season 4 of Stranger Things to Season 3, Stranger Things, you really hear the difference.

CH: How much do you know about Apple’s version of binaural foldown algorithm?

DS: We don’t know exactly where they’re going. We know a lot of our former employees went there. So, some of the knowledge obviously also went there. But they did obviously do their own research as well. We focus on creating a very specific application that creates a more natural hearing environment, whether it’s on the recording side or on the playback side. And as a result, we believe that our technology is very advanced in that field and we look forward to the whole industry moving towards that because that’s better for everybody.

CH: You must spend quite a bit of time considering what the metaverse will look like and talking to other to other  industry leaders at high level. Are you excited about the future?

DS: Absolutely! Usually with such advanced products, we would bring our prototypes and discuss them with the industry under NDA. One example is our AMBEO VR mic. We never intended to make a commercial product out of it. We simply wanted to discuss it with the industry. And then Facebook came along and said, ‘okay, this mic is the standard for VR production’. So, we immediately had to scramble and make a product out of it.

TeamConnect Ceiling 1 was also just a prototype which we sold to some leading customers, initially. So TeamConnect Ceiling 2 is the real product coming out of that.

This co-creation with our industry partners and application specialists, is something we have done since the beginning of the company. After all, the first wireless microphone system was developed together with German TV in 1958. So, we have this long-standing customer focus — bringing our technology and letting the customer guide what the possible applications really are.

SENNHAUSER: BEWARE OF PALE IMITATIONS

CH: Out of interest, Daniel, how common is the surname Sennheiser where you’re from?

DS: Not common at all. I am not aware of anybody else with that surname except our family. There are similar names in Switzerland, but apart from our family and a few fake accounts on social networks, we don’t know anyone else.

CH: So, you never really stood a chance! You had to join the family business.

DS: Growing up, I was always very much the rebel in the family. I didn’t want anything to do with the family business. Meanwhile, my brother Andreas, whom I’m running the company with now, was very clear about joining the business since the beginning. He studied engineering and did a PhD in logistics, while I was more in the marketing, sales and design side. It was interesting to see us come together more or less at the same time, being ready for the company when the company needed us. And I think we were able to add quite a lot to the strategy of the company taking it over to the third generation.

CH: It’s quite a unique situation.  I guess we’re safe in saying you’re not likely to sell the business any time soon.

DS: No. We believe there’s a great future for us and the market is proving right now that we bet on the right horse. So, we’re very confident we can bring out lots of new products and invest heavily in our production. We’re tripling our capacity in our Romanian manufacturing plant right now. We’re heavily investing in our production in Germany. We’re investing heavily into R&D. We’re looking forward to shaping the future of audio.

CH: Anything interesting about to land that you can tell me about?

DS: Christmas is coming. And we all love surprises at Christmas! But I wouldn’t want to reveal anything before the market.

CH: Thanks for your time.

CREATIVE FLOW

AT: Do you ever find yourself in a creative rut?

PJ: I don’t think I’ve had that problem purely because everyone I work with is creative. I’ve had the pleasure of always having someone to bounce ideas off. I’m way better off when someone comes in with a little idea and I can build that into a big thing and then constrain it so it fits together cohesively. Most people have five ideas and they want to put it all into one video, that never works. I prefer getting one small idea and expanding it to make it big. That’s how I get my enthusiasm with creativity. And you’ve gotta always push yourself to do something new. That way your creativity stays fresh.

AT: What does a day on tour look like?

PJ: This latest Morgan Evans tour was one of the best I’ve been on. We had a whole bunch of great people; the band was unbelievably fun; everyone connected really well; and it was smaller, which I like because you can get more intimate and deep with everyone and find the story more easily. There’s less pressure to put on a persona. The average day on tour would be like: you wake up, find what time the lobby call is, get a coffee beforehand, probably do some stuff you should’ve done the night before, get out and go film some stuff – most days you’re filming some type of content, be it interviews or anything really. Then you go to the show and set up, which is a ‘hurry up and wait’ ordeal. You might do some behind the scenes backstage filming in the green room. Then the show’s on, you get the crew in, film the show, dump the footage for about an hour, pack up, get the bus back to the hotel, hopefully get more than five hours’ sleep, then wake up and do the same thing the next day.

AT: Do you edit as you go?

PJ: Yep. Sitting in a cafe, in a hotel lobby, in a hotel room, on a bus, on a plane – you’ve just gotta punch stuff up whenever you get the time. Everything’s fresh if you’re editing as you go and you can add more ideas and make the project better by understanding the depth of your content that’s already captured.

SUNTOWN STUDIOS

AT: How did Suntown Studios come about?

PJ: I got so bored during Covid that I decided I should do something constructive. There were a lot of creatives out there that have given up but are really so talented, that I felt they were needed more than ever especially when news and social media were telling you all the bad things about the world. Creatives are there to inspire us and give us hope. I thought if we’re not doing anything then this whole punishment of news and media is going to destroy us and I saw it happening locally and globally – it was terrible and I was compelled to something about it.

I always wanted to build a studio but I’d been travelling so much there wasn’t a point to it. So, my close mate Trentan Kruger and his wife Amy collaborated on building Suntown Studios for about a year – I said it was going to take three months. I wanted to use it for making my own content, doing music videos, making cool stuff for the local area but also bringing people in from interstate and across the world as well.

On top of that I wanted to be able to take the mentoring that I do to another level and offer high end training in filmmaking. That’s another thing that stopped during Covid and I really think there’s an importance to giving young guys some heads up. You see a lot of young crew do some cool stuff and then they fizzle out – I wanted to help get those people from having a some part time film work to making video as a full time job.

For me, it was a big jump around 2008 when I decided I’m only going to do music videos as a job. And I ate mi goreng noodles for six months until it started kicking off. There was a lot I learnt during those periods of my life and I want to help these younger crew do it because, not only is it important, but it gave me a dream life too. And there’s actually an industry for it now, which is begging for people to produce this type of high end content.

LONGEVITY

AT: Has social media changed the way you think about producing video content?

PJ: I think it has changed but more that it’s made me double down on what I do. Video on Tik Tok and Instagram is all throwaway content, it’s literally just a whole lot of useless noise. People are relying on trends and algorithms to get views and hits to be successful. I understand it – you feel good when a lot of people are watching what you do. I come from a background where the longevity or impact of everything you do is the most important factor to your life. But now I’m seeing this massive shift to do content, content, content, but at the end of the day, for me, it’s just noise. That content won’t be remembered by the person who watched it in a week’s time or a day’s time. I double down on making stuff that people remember for a long time and it just keeps ticking over again and again. I’m not saying these platforms are terrible because they helped me at the start with my music videos going a bit viral, which helped my career. But it’s more the reason why you’re doing it. And I don’t think many people understand that. That comes a lot with the training that I do. People come in saying they really love making content and films and music but if you get swept into following the craze of the fads and trends you’ll end up losing your soul. You won’t keep doing it for the rest of your life, you’ll burn out and turn into someone you’ll most likely regret.

AT: What makes content memorable and gives it longevity?

PJ: It’s hard to put my finger on it but I’d start by saying ‘make something so good that people come to you.’ I don’t even know what that means – you can’t really bottle that concept up. But you have to connect, you have to be compelling, and you have to make people want to watch it again and make them feel something. When one of my first music videos for The Paper Kites (Bloom) went viral I didn’t realise what the storytelling and the look of it made people feel but when I started reading the comments, I got it. This is my job, I’m here to help people feel something and take them to a place better than where they’re at. Music does that for you. That different edge of creativity is the world I’m in. And I think there should be more of that, and less of the ‘throwaway’ content.

AUDIO CAPTURE

AT: What’s your approach to capturing audio?

PJ: They say audio is 51% of a film, it’s more important than the visual element. I make it my priority to utilise audio in ways no one really does, especially by adding layers of sound design in music videos. I spend a lot more time doing sound design editing than actually the video editing itself.

Hence why I take my Zoom stuff with me everywhere, so I can capture any sound anytime.

For example, I’m doing a music video for Morgan Evans at the moment and it’s him singing in a Sydney alleyway while it’s raining. So I might open it up with some ambient rain recordings that I grabbed on set and drop it in and out. Even during the Bliss N Esso doco, there’s a part where they creep out to the crowd and I follow them out to the stairs. I recorded and added footsteps on concrete and a door opening and shutting as they go through. Adding those extra layers of sound design really takes the viewer into another level of immersiveness.

AT: What’s your run ’n’ gun audio rig?

PJ: I record everything with the Zoom F1 recorder. I plug in the LMF-2 lapel mic for all the interviews I do – it sounds incredible. Then for recording ambient crowd noise and effects I use the SSH-6 shotgun capsule and XYH-5 mic. I find the F1 incredible. Being able to make adjustments easily and record on the device itself is great. I’ve used it so much in the last two weeks for the Morgan Evans documentary. My Zoom gear never breaks. I have a H4 that I’ve used for who knows how many years and it’s still running hot. I throw them in the most ridiculous places and they go hard. Plus I think the audio quality is impeccable.

AT: How do you use Zoom mics to capture ambience at a live concert?

PJ: I put two shotgun mics on stage as left and right and point them out towards the front crowd over the barrier. It gets the bigness of the crowd as well as the intimate sound of the people who are screaming or saying something in the front row. I try and use audio to get to that next dimension of quality so it’s not just the visuals that make you feel like you’re there but the audio plays a massive role in that too. When editing I tweak the audio master at the end and blend in some of my audio over the top just to get that extra live feeling. The Zoom shotguns sound so good that I’ve even been asked by the audio producers for the recordings to add underneath their live album mixes. This is my favourite part of the whole filmmaking process, just that little extra spice that makes the whole project spring to life.

epikfilms.net
suntownstudios.com
zoomcorp.com
dynamicmusic.com.au

PRODUCTION VALUES

I can’t comment on how the whistling and the rest of ‘I Ain’t Worried’ came into being as I wasn’t part of that process, but I did have input on the production of it. We liked the cool, natural, ‘indie’ intonation of the whistle so we left it untouched. Tuning is great if you’re doing a super pop record, but the vibe of this song called for those beautiful imperfections to be left intact to give it a more human feel. If you put a song like this right bang in tune it can sound over-polished and may lose its character. I placed a few effects like saturation and reverb on the whistle, and the intro was low-pass filtered for a more lo-fi feel, but after the first chorus a more hi-fi version can be heard coming through.

While mixing I always want to keep the songwriter’s original intentions in mind, and I try to support this with rhythm and tone. In the case of this song, it had a retro-meets-modern sound, so I worked with things like slap echo and vintage-style reverbs. In general, you want to get the vocals feeling awesome before moving on, but in this case I also set my mind to getting the drums knocking a little harder. Recognising these needs is all part of creating an aesthetic for the song.

CLIENTS & MIXING

One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to do something significant to the mix, it’s a good idea to initiate a dialogue rather than surprise the client. While mixing, I’ll regularly reference the original demo because that’s the sound the band will have become familiar with. I also try approaching them with: ‘I’m imagining that guitar in the chorus sounding a bit quieter/louder’, and then ask them how they feel about the idea. Mentally preparing the client for your suggestions means that they won’t be blindsided, which keeps them open to further suggestions. 

There are also mixes where the artist or producer wants you to be bold — to craft a stronger sonic identity for them. Here you can be more creative, but it’s still good to respect the work of the artist and producer, so clear communication remains a key element for success here too. Because I have a long-term relationship with OneRepublic they are incredibly open to suggestions — if I’m hearing something a different way I can easily have that dialogue with them before touching it.

Everyone can suffer from the psychological/creative blockage of ‘demo-itis’, where you start to like something that you’ve been stuck on for a while. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome of writing and mixing. At the same time, people hire you for your taste and decision making, so if they trust you to make those decisions, that’s something you should try to remain focused on.

PRACTICAL PRODUCTION

When beginning a new project, I generally start with whatever grabs my attention — with whatever the heart of the record is. If it’s a piano piece with only a little drumming then I’m not going to start with the drums. I’ll start with the piano, or maybe a vocal. Because the groove is a foundation of ‘I Ain’t Worried’ I started working on getting a rough balance between the drums and bass. I then worked on the guitars, which have a gnarly, ’60s slappy reverb/delay. (I love that stuff!) Then I worked on the vocals, and at the end I looked at the brass stabs and other effects. I always save these effect tracks til last because they don’t really make or break the record.

DRUMS

With regards to the drums, there were three different kicks. There’s a short, click-y kick that I added because I wanted to get a bit more attack. I used the Drum Replacer plugin, found a sample I liked, and made sure that it was properly aligned, and in phase. Using the FabFilter Pro-Q3 I added a little bit of top and some higher midrange, dipping a bit around 250Hz and boosting some lows at 100Hz. Then I had the Oeksound Spiff pushing some attack. That plugin is like a transient designer, it does something really unique and controlled. Finally, there’s the Korvpressor compressor, to give a polished, punchy sound.

The drums and the other drum elements were sent to the ‘All Drums’ bus, where I added the Waves OneKnob Filter in one section, and again with the Korvpressor, and then the Amek EQ. Generally, this bussing process is a polish. If I turn off the effects on the bus, it won’t fall apart, but you’ll definitely lose a bit of sweetening. The Amek EQ200 was adding a little at 8kHz, like 0.6dB for a smidge more forwardness. It’s a breakbeat groove, so I wanted the sound to be punchy and snappy.

BASS

There are several bass elements; an 808 and two Reveal Sound Spire bass tracks; and the ‘Old Bass’ (from the original movie session), ‘Bass Slide’, and ‘Bass Wurl’ tracks. These aren’t all playing simultaneously, apart from the Spire bass and live Old Bass tracks, where the Spire was only adding a little sub content and extension to the live bass. On the live bass I added the FabFilter Pro-MB, which compresses from 74Hz to 346Hz — giving me a bit more stability in that range. Then I had Native Instruments’ Supercharger GT (I love that thing, it’s so badass!), where I cranked the saturation and added a bit more compression. One important thing to keep an eye on is level-matching because you can easily trick yourself when going into a compressor/saturator. When it’s 2-3dBs hotter you can be inclined to think, ‘Wow, this sounds better’, but really it’s just louder.

VOCALS

Getting the balance right between Ryan’s lead vocals and the ‘gang’ vocals was the main challenge. The gang vocals add character, but they also take attention away from the lead singer if they’re too hot. The gang vocals are great and add a lot of hype to the mix, but I wanted to keep Ryan centre stage. The name of the game was finding a level that excited the chorus while still being able to hear the character of the lead vocals clearly.

I generally spend a lot of time on vocals, and in this case, there was a combination of different effects to achieve the sound. For example, there’s some distortion on the lead vocals, using Waves’ Manny Marroquin Distortion plugin. I’ll usually use this plugin on tambourines or drums, but in this case it worked really well on the lead.

I also gave the lead vocals some extra midrange, which I pushed with the Waves Vitamin Sonic Enhancer. I’ve also got the Slate Virtual Mix Rack, with the FG-N EQ, the FG-Stress compressor, and the FG-Bomber, which I used to add transient enhancement. The mix knob of the FG-Stress was at about 18% because I was really slamming it, and the Bomber was only active in the verses to add attack. It sounds like I have loads of plugins on the vocals, but they’re each only doing a tiny bit. All those small enhancements really tend to add up.

The send-effects on the vocals are also a big part of the ‘sauce’. I had a Soundtoys EchoBoy doing some very light quarter note repeats, set to the Space Echo setting — which I think is based on the Roland RE 201. The EchoBoy is one of my favourite delays. I also used the UAD Galaxy Tape Echo, which is so gnarly, it gets me those vintage vibes right away. Then I had the Valhalla Vintage Reverb with a two-second reverb, and high-passed quite heavily. I also narrowed it down a bit as it’s such a wide sounding reverb — a bit too grand for this kind of song. 

I’ve also got a bit of side-chain on the reverb where the VolumeShaper4 created some light quarter-note pulses to add movement to the reverb. After that, there was the SoundToys MicroShift, which is a doubler to subtly detune. I have the same effects on the chorus section too, but they’re balanced a bit differently. And then at the end you’ve got a slap from the EchoBoy, set to StudioTape, 72ms on the left, 92ms on the right. The delay offset is to avoid phase issues, as using the same delay or effect settings twice can get you into trouble. On the delay slap send, I’ve got the UAD Pultec MEQ-5. I dipped out some 300Hz and I pushed 2k, just to make the vocals more present and to have the effect sit a certain way.

For the pièce de résistance I have some extra tails on specific phrases. I copied regions where I wanted more reverb than on other tracks, and added a FabFilter Pro-Q3 before the verb, cutting out low- and high-end, and then applying the Valhalla Vintage Verb. This had slightly longer tails than the send on the lead. I blended the ‘1980s Concert Hall’ and ‘1970s Concert Hall’ as inserts on the chopped regions, with different modulation and filter settings. I also shaped the envelope a bit differently. If you listen to the reverbs, you’ll hear that the ends of certain phrases are a little wetter in verses. This creates depth and contrast.

MIX WRAP

To conclude, on the stereo mix I had the bx_digital EQ3, but not as an EQ. I used it purely for its ‘Mono Maker’ summing tool. It flips everything under 80Hz to mono. I also used two analogue pieces of gear to add a bit of glue and polish. The Dangerous Compressor is hitting the song maybe 2dB in peak sections. I like the way this compressor tightens the punch in a very transparent, 3D way. I also have the Bax EQ pushing a bit of 74Hz and 7.1kHz, and the filter section active at 12Hz and 70kHz.

Where the signal comes back into the digital domain, I applied the Oxford Inflator, which adds a bit of presence and harmonic content.

Next, the UAD Curve Bender EQ pushes half a dB at 20k, just to add some air. (I wasn’t kidding when I said that these things aren’t doing much!) And finally, I have the iZotope Ozone 9 Imager doing some light imaging enhancement to make it sound a little more polished. We then sent the mix to the brilliant — and super-cool — Chris Gehringer, who mastered it for us.

So, as you can see, a lot of my mix work was about balancing the lead vocals and gang vocals. There are tons of gang vocals, especially in the choruses. It’s those gang vocals that give the song that cool ‘sunglasses’ sound I was talking about.