SQUEAKY CLEAN

I’ve done my fair share of vocal and speech noise reduction over the years. My experience is that even with the best tools of the trade, when used heavy handedly, it’s extremely difficult to avoid sonic artefacts like a loss of treble, weirdness in ‘s’ and ‘f’ sounds, and an overall wobbly, watery texture. 

What impressed me about Hush is the way it preserves the natural timbre of the voice in the recording while cleanly, accurately and thoroughly removing excess noise and reverberations – this includes anything from steady hums and broadband noise to sporadic transient interruptions. Noisy stretches of audio are ‘gated’ to silence but phrases of speech start and end naturally. The result is quite like what you’d expect from a vocal booth recording, and thus takes extra processing – like compression, EQ, de-essing or enhancing – incredibly well.

It’d be nice to see more control in future versions of Hush over settings like sensitivity, background noise vs reverb attenuation, or even replacement ‘noise’ options to reintroduce a subtle ambience to a track that feels unnatural with the full anechoic treatment. I wonder if the program’s accuracy could also be enhanced if the user can specify whether it’s operating on a male or female voice, soft or loud, high or low, etc.

Ian plans to widen Hush’s application to support vocals and other musical sources in the future. For now, anyone who finds themselves frustratedly cleaning up noisy dialogue on a regular basis needs to check out the free trial and be instantly blown away.

Hush is one example of how AI is making what we once thought impossible incredibly accessible. It’s now available on the Mac App Store for an introductory price of US$49.99/AU$79.99/NZ$89.99.

Official press release below:

CALCULATING MATHEMATICS

This Ed Sheeran ‘Mathematics’ tour is very different to the last. The tour plays to stadiums in an in-the-round configuration. The cable-tensioned staging is an engineering marvel, carefully balanced to use the audio, lighting and video equipment as counterbalancing weights (the central LED screens weighs in at 45 tonne). If you’ve ever seen someone pulling up a model ship in a bottle then you get something of the idea — only, this ‘ship’ is life size and the ‘bottle’ is the size of the MCG!

The biggest concert tour in the world requires the biggest production spec. The headline number is 212 x Meyer Sound Panther elements… 212! There are many, many 1100-LFC subs, as you can imagine. There are 314 speaker cabinets in total, including a couple of Meyer Sound’s ULTRA-X40 monitors at front of house, which Chris Marsh relies on if it’s raining and the FOH tent is fully covered.

PRODUCTION ED ACHES

The audio challenge is obvious and immense. How do you provide audiences with a good concert experience in a venue that’s probably never experienced one? The MCG is a graveyard for audio. It’s an enormous, cavernous bowl and if you’re in-the-round, the artist is at the centre of the mayhem, being annihilated by all the reflections. The MCG spent millions on upgrading its in-house audio a few years ago, and it may be the envy of the world for the intelligibility of PA announcements, but no one’s pretending it’s a top-draw concert venue.

During soundcheck, the acoustic thwack of the snare drum said it all. The first reflection off the grandstand is fiendishly removed from the direct sound.

Thankfully, some 110,000 people help to tame the acoustics but present a bunch of their own issues. System engineer, Charlie Albin, outlines the challenge and how to measure success:

“After the first song is completed and it feels like things are settled into some sort of a rhythm, I’ll go and listen to the PA at various vantage points in the venue.

“I’ll head to the top seats and listen to the PA and make an assessment on the frequency coverage. I might make some gentle tonal shifts, slight tweaks.

“Often it’s a question of: is there enough clarity in the mix? Can they hear Ed’s vocal clearly? Can they get enough musicality from the guitar for them to enjoy the experience?

“Maybe we’re not hearing quite enough intelligibility in the vocal. So do we want to pull a bit of low-mids out, which arguably could make the mix a touch less musical but we gain diction and clarity?

“Finding the right balance is everything. The show is all about Ed and people want to be able to sing along; they want to laugh at the jokes; and when he says, ‘Put your hands in the air’ Ed wants everyone involved in the show.

“As audio engineers, we’re naturally hypercritical of the sound and our work, but I think the best marker for any show, is to go sit in what I would suspect is the worst seat and see what the people around me are doing. And if they’re smiling, clapping, singing along and laughing when the artist says something on stage, then to me that’s a really good indication that we’ve delivered a great show.”

HEAR KITTY KITTY

Meyer Sound’s Panther and the Ed Sheeran tour are joined at the hip. The first 200+ boxes off the production line went straight to the tour’s first day in Dublin, mid 2022, and front of house engineer Chris Marsh consulted with John and Helen Meyer on the design: “Prior to the tour I mentioned to John and Helen that as much as I love their Leo system I would have to look at another vendor’s solution because the staging wouldn’t allow for Leo’s weight. Their answer was: ‘stick with us, we’re working on something that we think will do the trick. From that point onwards, we got heavily involved with the development of Panther. And it’s no coincidence that Panther ended up being the perfect box for this show!”

Panther’s launch promise was a heavyweight 150dB maximum output from a bantamweight 150-pound (68kg) enclosure. It’s a two-way system with many ‘ground-up’ innovations to shoehorn extreme performance into a compact enclosure.

One of the first questions Charlie Albin and Chris Marsh get is: ‘which do they prefer? Leo or Panther’? The answer is honest: they’ve never heard Panther in an arena in a ‘stereo’ configuration, while they’ve never heard Leo in a stadium, in the round.

But there’s no doubt in Charlie Albin’s mind that Panther is a step forward: “Other than Panther being a shade lower in terms of outright SPL on axis, it more or less supersedes Leo in every other way — weight, power consumption and more.

“One of the most impressive aspects of the new Panther design is the horn. The long-throw horn is the incredibly consistent — tonally there’s next to no discernible shift from on axis to off axis, until you get to the edge of the horn’s coverage and then it drops off very, very quickly.

“That aspect makes designing a system easier: just have the arrays overlap at the seam and you know you’ve got excellent coverage for every seat.

“Panther’s long throw horn is a true 80° horizontal coverage, whereas Leo’s is 75° or thereabouts. So it means we can cover more of the venue with fewer arrays and, as well as being a smaller, lighter box, we require fewer trucks, and reduced transport needs.”

Getting the Mathematics production trucked and shipped is, as you can imagine, a logistical challenge. There are now three identical stages that leap frog across the world, which get united with technical production site to site. Fun fact: staging ballast (steel plates) concealed under each of the pylons weigh around 60 tonnes per pylon.

COPPER TO CAT

The Mathematics tour sees an enormous deployment of Milan digital audio. Milan is the result of the AVnu alliance of PA manufacturers (initially) seeking to share an interoperable audio-over-IP protocol that would (among other features) guarantee arrival times to ensure phase coherent sound — something especially crucial when you’ve got long hangs of loudspeakers. The protocol uses AVB as its basis.

It means that the audio is digital from the desk (although the Digico Quantum 7 didn’t have a AVB card to natively talk Milan at the time the tour went out) via AES3 to the FOH Galaxy processor and, thereafter, Milan AVB all the way to the back of each loudspeaker via 20 x Luminex 26i Gigacore network switches in a star topology. In fact, audio from Ed’s mic (Sennheiser System 6000 via AES3) to loudspeaker is entirely digital!

“I’m not a networking guy,” confirms Charlie Albin. “But the way Milan is integrated into the Meyer Galaxy processor makes networking accessible to non-network people. The control software is really straightforward.

“Using Milan, and the way we’ve designed the system, increases our resilience as well. A show-stop fault is unthinkable for a gig like this, and Milan provides us with more options to design in network redundancy, such that if a connector goes wrong or a switch goes down we have options.

“On top of that, we have an entirely analogue backstop as well if the network fails.”

What does Charlie say to detractors who remain suspicious of using IT gear for a show?

“I think we idealise analogue. I’m a long-time analogue audio and copper cable user but all that comes with faults, indeed, show-stopping faults, as well. But we feel better about it because we are more familiar with how to fault find and how to fix an intermittent copper line.

“The advantage of a system like AVB/Milan is being able to design in network redundancy, so you can work around any issue that might come up, as it happens, and not wait until after the show.”

STRIKING UP THE BAND

Another striking difference in the Mathematics tour is the addition of a band joining Ed. That said, the bulk of the show remains firmly steered by Ed’s vocal, guitar work and his mastery of the loop pedal.

Chris Marsh: “Ed’s loop pedal setup has evolved considerably this time around. We now have five of them on stage all wirelessly controlled by Ed. I now have more loop pedal channels than ever before — I’ve now got about 16 loop pedal channels on top of his vocal.

“Ed generally carries his vocal mic because he runs around the stage, singing over his loops. But we also have a secondary microphone for him and a spare microphone and a further spare to grab and use — all the wireless is Sennheiser System 6000. The same goes for his loop pedal: there are multiple positions for his loop microphones, which he uses to loop his vocals.

“Everything’s dealt with by my trusty Digico Quantum 7. At each of the band positions, each under a structural mast, we have a Digico SD rack for the musician’s to plug into — four positions in total. The loop pedal is an Orange device picking up MADI and there’s an SD rack for all the RF under the stage and the front of house. We’ve got a Mini SD rack dealing with my local elements, including any tracks from Logic.

MIXING MONITORS

Front of house engineer, Chris Marsh, is accustomed to tending to all of Ed Sheeran’s audio needs, including giving him a monitor mix. Nothing has changed in that regard on the Mathematics tour, even though a five-piece band has been added and joins Ed for some of the program.

Chris Marsh: “I continue to mix monitors for Ed and now mix monitors for the band. Sounds like a daunting task to most people, but actually, with this band and with this artist, it really isn’t — it’s just workflow management. The musicians are amazing and know the deal — get your monitor mix right during soundcheck.

“That said, early on I introduced the Klang monitoring system to allow the band an element of individual control over their own mix. We got a fair way through the rehearsal period and they got rid of that control but we retained Klang. Everything has a 360°, immersive feel with Klang, which the musicians appreciate even if they don’t know it’s happening. It helped them to be quickly involved in the mix and happy with their monitors.

“Mixing Ed’s monitors is low maintenance as well. If he ever has a problem, there’s a switch mic on stage where he can shout to me.”

IN EAR EVOLUTION

You might reasonably call Ed Sheeran the world’s most popular busker, given that’s his background, always been his MO, and how he develops a rapport with the crowd — even a stadium crowd. So it’s not a surprise that Ed didn’t immediately take to in-ear monitors, like a duck to water.

Chris Marsh: “In the 11 years I’ve been mixing Ed Sheeran, we’ve gone from using two wedges on stage to four wedges, to adding sidefills with lots of sub bass for him to feel it, to a point where we did a show one day where the audience was so loud that we couldn’t get the wedges and sidefills loud enough to hear himself. After that show he said he’d try in-ear monitors. But then for years he’d only have one earpiece in. He didn’t like feeling enclosed in his head; he liked to be with the audience.

“When we designed this show to be in the round, I had to break it to him that there was no way possible to have wedges on the rotating stage, let alone sidefills. So we were going to have to go to both ears. I introduced Klang at that point and I wanted to make him feel like he didn’t have his ears in — I wanted him to feel like he had the audience right there all the time, and Klang has enabled me to do that. Now he does keep his ears in for probably 90% of the show and is very happy with the setup.”

Interestingly, given the brutal nature of stadium acoustics, Chris has done away with crowd mics for Ed’s in-ear mix. Being in the middle of a giant colosseum every night ensures there’s plenty enough crowd coming down his Sennheiser vocal mic without dedicated crowd mics. As for the Klang system, Ed now can’t live without it.

Chris Marsh: “Again, Ed doesn’t even know about the Klang element — he doesn’t know he’s got it. But he does know when he doesn’t have it, which happened not so long ago at a small show where we were forced to return to stereo ears. At the end of the show, he pulled me aside: ‘I don’t know what was different, but I didn’t like it.’ Of course, the next show, when we were back to our own setup, it was back to normal and Ed was happy.

PANTHER PROWL

Chris Marsh talks about mixing an Ed Sheeran show in stadiums as the challenge of balancing compromises. The stadium is doing everything it can to turn your mix into indecipherable slop, and you need all your wits and all the tools at your disposal to bring order to chaos.

Chris Marsh: “Regardless of the act, mixing in a stadium in the round is about as challenging as you can get. You’ve got reflections coming from from everywhere but, equally, every stadium has its own characteristics. One stadium might be especially dreadful for sub bass — it’s just impossible to get it tight and it just wallows around all the time. At that point you have to decide whether you sacrifice some low-end impact in the show for the benefit of clarity — not my preference, there’s a balancing act there. Another stadium might be especially vicious on the vocals, with reflections impacting on intelligibility. Do you decide to mix a little bit louder to battle it out with the first reflection, or do you make the unpopular move of turning the overall level down and find a point where the clarity comes back. You just have to be willing to adapt your mix all the time to suit what you’re hearing.”

HELLO DUBLIN!

The addition of Meyer Sound’s new Panther system has been a key factor in helping Chris Marsh go into battle with the world’s stadiums. As mentioned, Meyer Sound debuted Panther on the Mathematics tour, which sounds like a marketing masterstroke. The reality was a little more ‘seat of the pants’ than that.

Chris Marsh: “I heard Panther for the first time in the stadium in Dublin on our opening date of the tour. Actually, it’s scarier than that: the first time I heard Ed’s live vocal through Panther was when he appeared on stage and said, ‘Hello, Dublin!’. So that was nerve wracking. But I do recall at the time reaching for the output fader of my nearfield X40s believing that they were still on, and they were not. Listening to Panther for the first time, everything was was right in front of me; it felt like it was near field. Mathematics is largely run in mono, but we do run in stereo to a point, and I could hear stereo imagery, which I wasn’t expecting given the front of house position, under a large hang of loudspeakers and with a mast and other staging between me and the inner ring of Panther.”

Charlie Albin picks up the story of that dramatic first night of the tour in Dublin. “We got some great feedback after the first show. Our team who’d been all around the venue, metering and comparing SPL levels, told me that we were within 1 to 2dB difference from the front row to the back seat of the grandstand. That’s phenomenal. We’ve never previously been able to achieve such a consistent coverage of that venue in that way.”

Interview: Neil Gray

AT: Describe your journey to becoming a music producer.

Oscar Dawson: I remember messing around with a Fostex four-track cassette recorder when I was a kid. That might have been my favourite time in my musical history. I used to use a really shitty multi-effects pedal and record layers of guitar and voice, and put them through the pedal, add delay, reverb, distortion, or whatever, then buss them onto one of the tracks, keep recording more overdubs… repeat. I’d be lost in there for hours.

I played in bands as a young adult and started getting those old Digidesign MBoxes, Digi 002, Digi 003, basic ProTools setups. I think of those years as the dark days of digital as the plug-ins and converters, were so bad. I started out making demos for my band, then kept at it, making demos for other bands. I was in enough recording environments that I picked up mic techniques, and learnt about what types of microphones were commonly used for what types of applications. I just kept doing it, gradually bought pieces of equipment, and eventually got to a point where someone paid me a small amount to manage and mix a recording session. 

AT: Describe your current studio setup.

Oscar Dawson: I record in ProTools with UAD converters. I use UA’s Console application for running the monitoring side of my setup.  I do have a 32-channel 1978 Yamaha PM2000 console but it’s busted — the joys of consoles. I’m working to fix that at the moment and I’ll use a lot of the console preamps once it’s going again — maybe I’ll use it for summing, too. I use a pair of JLM 1290 preamps, and an Undertone MPDI-4 (four preamp) unit. Those are my go-to pres — they’re glorious. I have one of those Hairball 1176 compressors (rack unit, not 500 series), and a Distressor. I finished building my studio around six months ago, so I’m recovering from that experience before I dive any deeper into more outboard purchases. Plug-in wise, I’ve got lots of UAD plugs and lots of external DSP! I’m currently running 18 cores. Beyond that, I love the FabFilter and Sound Toys plugs and I’ve been getting more into some of the iZotope plugs as well. 

AT: Describe your favourite, ideal or preferred, workspace/methods and why?

Oscar Dawson: If I’m working with a band — and by this I mean, a collection of multiple humans who play instruments all together simultaneously and that’s their main creative approach — I like everybody to be in the same room together. It just makes communication so much easier. I like doing preproduction, possibly just in a rehearsal studio so the stakes feel lower. I like to get everybody playing together. We can just tell what works, more immediately than when we spend ages building songs in the computer, especially around tempo and key. If it’s more a ‘production’-style project, or a band that tends to like doing more programming and sequencing, I would, of course, flow with that and work within the computer. Maybe I’ll build from demo stems, if they exist. I find those types of projects work better when there is just one or two creative minds in the band or project to bounce off, rather than four or five individuals. I like to play instruments, too. I will always try to get the performances out of the instrumentalists in a project but if the band members are relaxed about it, I’ll often find myself playing a lot. I don’t like sitting at my computer and just hitting record and layering playlists in ProTools for later comping. That’s my least favourite thing to do, and if it is to be avoided by me playing a part, then we do that. If it is to be avoided by the player leaving for a short while to do some foundational work, we do that. I don’t like moving slowly.

AT: Favourite microphone or any other pieces of kit that are indispensable to you?

Oscar Dawson: I’m a practical producer — I’ll work within the parameters allowed. For example, time that we have available, Covid lockdowns, are we interstate, and so on, and also I’ll follow the energy of the performer in ascertaining the right piece of gear. So, all to say, I don’t obsess about microphones or other pieces of kit.

Quite often I find that a vocalist will become intimidated when you plonk them in a fancy booth with a beautiful old shockmounted microphone and a pop-filter. In these types of instances, I might be in the control room with the band, communicating with the singer via a talkback mic. They start feeling excluded from the control room discussions, they find it hard to get their mix right, lose a bit of confidence, and then the vibe is completely lost. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does, I am reminded how little value the fancy microphone is. I recently made a record with a band, where the singer is super dynamic, and also likes to just whack out a vocal pass here and there, take breaks, talk shit, do another full pass, not do too many drop-ins. After all, this singer hand-holds a mic on stage and puts in amazing performances so why not just do that in studio? We ended up recording the whole record with a Beta 58, hand held, with the singer right next to me in the control room. We could chat between takes, find a relaxed energy, and that worked perfectly. The takes are awesome. I don’t think we would’ve got that if we put this singer in front of my old U87 in a booth. This is a roundabout way of saying; I don’t have a favourite microphone.

Indispensable kit? Beyerdynamic headphones. My room. My Unity Audio monitors (Boulder mkII). I had to mix a lot on headphones during the Covid times, and I do love headphones, but, once I could get back on my monitors in a proper room, things felt like they were ‘back to normal’.

AT: In the last 10 years, what pieces of gear, or features, that have proven to be game changers for you?

Oscar Dawson: The Universal Audio kit has been so useful and made life easier. There may be better converters out there, but for pure practicality, I’ve found the integration of the interfaces with the software so simple and intuitive. Likewise, the plug-ins sound fab.

This sounds a bit niche but some very basic and long overdue Pro Tools features have been improved on over the years. I remember when there was no off-line bouncing. That’s no longer the case. I remember when they wouldn’t compensate for plug-in delay on side-chain inputs. That’s no longer the case. Little things like that make such a difference and save so much time.

AT: How have your working methods changed over the last 10 years?

Oscar Dawson: I’ve become less pedantic and more focussed on the right energy. I’m less stressed about making things sound ‘perfect’. I’ve always done a lot in the box — I came up during a time when, with my background and training, it wasn’t possible to learn and practice using outboard equipment, tape machines, or consoles. I had to just use the computer. They’ve gotten so much better, it’s ridiculous. So, that hasn’t really changed, other than the ease of use and power of the computer — so I’m doing lots of programming, lots of manipulation of sound in the box. That only increased during the COVID isolation months.

I am more open to remote recording than I used to be. If there is a great drummer interstate who can record him or herself and send files through, then great, do it. If we want changes? We’ll ask for them. If the guitarist is just DI’d and puts down a great performance, and we use an amp sim to bring it to life, do it. No point overthinking, then miking up an amp, spending time getting a tone, then trying to re-create the performance. We’ll lose hours and become sad in the process.

Another big change: don’t follow any tradition of recording order. Don’t leave vocals until last. Don’t do drums first. It doesn’t have to be that way. I often try to get a programmed drum part down, or just a rough guide, then do basic instruments, then vocals. Then come back to the guitars, other programming, maybe, then live drums. Don’t let the vocalist to just sit there waiting to do their bits, it’s a nightmare for them and may waste more time in the long run.

AT: Any tips/words of wisdom for someone starting out?

Oscar Dawson: Take your time. Don’t rush, in life, or in sessions. When mixing, let the mix emerge, don’t force it. Don’t listen to references too much, they’ll confuse you and make you feel bad. Do listen in the car. Get a decent pair of monitors and set them up in a decent-enough room. Pay for plug-ins — your computer will run better, and you’ll respect the plugs more. Always ask, at the higher level, what is the piece of music trying to say; what is the purpose of the music?

SOUND IS EVERYTHING

Midas has prioritised sound quality and it starts with its renowned preamps (I’ll talk about those some more later in the review). After conversion, there’s 64-bit floating point processing of 24-bit/96k audio throughout with no compromise in performance or channel count. Extensive delay compensation and phase alignment on all outputs combine to minimise comb-filtering effects. I/O latency is quoted as 1.34ms.

Internet connectivity is a feature of the Midas Heritage D. Users can create a Midas Cloud account on the Midas website. Show files can be saved to the cloud so as to be retrieved as required rather than relying on a USB drive. User presets can be stored and firmware updates can be done online. If there is no internet available the console works offline, local users can be set up and their work stored on the console.

ACROSS THE BOARD

Once connected, tabs across the top of the screen get you most places you need to go. The Patching tab is intuitive for new users but the full depth of functionality will take time to explore.

Once patched, the Navigation tab offers preset and customisable navigation layouts based around five modes related to how the user wants to operate – HD96 and Pro series modes are Midas landscapes and there’s also VCA, Theatre and Monitor modes. Dedicated buttons between the fader banks can be used to switch between modes during the show.

LEARNING CURVE

To get the most out of the console will require some learning, they all do, but perhaps especially here because the Heritage D offers features you didn’t even know you needed. A good example is the unique Manchino page. No one seems to like the name but that doesn’t matter because it’s a powerful copy/paste/group manipulator that can patch or apply changes to multiple channels simultaneously. There’s no obvious precedents for it, and it takes some exploring to realise its full potential, but it’s an efficient way of applying common attributes to multiple input channels when setting up. There’d be uses for temporary ganging of channels with absolute or relative level controls, and Manchino offers some clever ways of dealing with multiple monitor sends quickly during soundcheck, for example.

You didn’t know you needed Tags either. The Heritage D uses metadata to tag common functions or processes and lets you use the tags to select channels. All channels with a compressor, for instance, can be selected, they stripe across the console for easy access and give you a useful overview of all the channels being compressed… it can change the way you look at the channel dynamics seeing them all together. A Clipped Channels tag selects all channels that have overloaded (and offers the chance to collectively drop their input gains). Selecting channels tagged as Patched reassures the paranoid operator just wanting to be sure.

JOIN THE GROUP

Then there’s groups and groups of groups. The 24 VCAs and 24 Pop groups can be organised from Manchino or the Control Groups tabs. Buttons in the centre of the fader bank let you get to your preferred groups quickly and remove the need for anonymous layers. Between the VCAs, Pop Groups, Manchino, Tags, Auxs and assignable buttons/knobs there are many ways to get to and control the channels.

The Flexi Aux setup allows auxes to be sent to auxes, making handy sub-groups for FOH and/or IEM mixes as well as regular aux functions like foldback from FOH. The Shout Mixer operates separately — the 12 Mute groups are available as well as 12 Talk groups for shout mixes. 

WARM & NATURAL

Functionality doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t sound good, and I found the Heritage D has a solid and effortless sound quality, quite warm and natural overall, and as good as I’ve heard from a computer with faders. The reaction of several experienced mixing professionals hearing the Heritage D for the first time confirmed my impressions — they all liked the sound.

Like painting a room, most of the work is in the preparation. Setting up a show, patching the stageboxes, and getting sound is not hard and the console gives you hints where it’s not right. The naming page deserves mention for its ease of use — unlike some budget consoles where tape and texta is still easier. Hi-res pixels (240×240) deliver sharp lettering on the scribblers too. This is a great console for those with less than perfect eyesight.

MIXING IT WITH HD96

Mixing a show on the Heritage D is certainly fun. At first it’s all about the screen and the larger-than-life GUI that rewards interactions and offers good control of most functions. It’s convinced me that one big touchscreen is better than multiple screens, and much better than the little screens that are hard to see. It can be very bright too; bright enough to work outdoors in the full Australian sun. 

Tearing my eyes away from the interesting functions and options on the screen long enough to listen to the band was a challenge at first but once the channel processing and grouping is in place, you can mix on the faders and knobs without using the screen much at all — I find it less distracting. Or you can fully embrace it and mix on the screen — the virtual faders are much better than a tablet or phone, you can use up to 10 simultaneously, and the screen responds well to pinch and swipe gestures. I sense a trend to move past faders and knobs and do it all from the screen, it would be cheaper to make them, but it’s a different feel working the screen, better suited to occasional changes rather than riding levels.

The size and layout of the Heritage D is great for flowing with the music, everything is right in front of you and nothing feels shoe-horned in. An advantage of the big screen is you can get so much content on view and it’s all clear and easy to interrogate. It’s a similar story for the physical controls: there’s space between knobs, and if you think of something to change, the controls won’t be far away. A vertical section on the right side of the screen gives a handy contextual snapshot of either Channel view or One Shot Pot (level and delay trims) or a display of the Sends Overview and Sends Details. These work with a horizontal row of eight knobs next to the screen that control the send levels. They’re multi-functional but do a great job of driving foldback sends. Fader Flip is another way.

The Heritage D doesn’t record directly onto the console but there’s patching to 144 tape returns to facilitate virtual soundchecks. An RTA is mentioned in the DSP configuration but access to it wasn’t obvious on the surface or screen.

IN SITU: CASEY RICE

I had the Heritage D set up at the Theatre Royal for a few weeks and had a lot of interest from local and visiting sound mixers — they all knew it existed and were keen to have a look and a listen. Castlemaine’s own Casey Rice (Sigur Ros, Tortoise) had just returned from a world tour with Stereolab, and he’d seen and used a Heritage D in the US and was particularly impressed by the sound quality. He thought the firmware and displays were in some ways different to the current version but his showfile on a USB stick opened up without bother.

“Stereolab travelled using house consoles everywhere. It was my first longer tour using digital mixers for FOH and I found it much much friendlier than other models I encountered along the way.
“I used a Heritage D for front of house at The Observatory in San Diego with Stereolab. They also were also using one for monitors. The sound of the console is great, the EQ in particular delivers what you expect applying it and sounds markedly better than other digital consoles to my ears.

“The touchscreen is a real winner on this model — no flaky touchscreen means not tapping something several times to get it to work.  The way the screen is configurable makes sense to me. The floating controls are a great idea and I felt much more at ease first time around on this than most any other digital console.

“The internet connectivity is an interesting feature: the software revision on the San Diego model was just using local accounts. I don’t see a great need for a Midas cloud for my show files. I suppose if you are a venue with multiple technicians it may make things a bit more tidy but personally I just see it as another possible point of failure. Improvements? It would be nice to be able to import Pro2 files, even with a utility app if necessary.”

MORE INPUTS: LOUIS CORNELL

Visiting mix engineer Louis Cornell is one of my favourites and part of the new breed of operators that were brought up on digital consoles and approach them with confidence. He had a look at the online editor before the show so he wasn’t flying totally blind but he was all over it at soundcheck and made full use of the patching/grouping/processing/FX power on hand even though he had never seen one in the flesh before. He was mixing Stella Donnelly and got a great finely-controlled and polished sound on the night.

“I think it’s a great console, and I’d be interested to see the uptake in the live community.

“The sound of the console is excellent — very Midas… every change I made was noticeable, pleasing and musical. The onboard plugins seem like a great deal of fun but with such a short show I couldn’t explore them all. I’d love to fiddle around further with everything on board and get an idea of what comps, EQs and other plugins I might want to use in certain circumstances.

“The physical controls are also good: a mixture of the old Pro series layout, the M series layout and some clever updates. The coloured encoders make navigation fairly quick to get up to speed with. 

“The GUI is unique and took some warming up to but with a few button presses and guesses I was able to figure out where most things were. I’m sure with a house tech present to teach me the best ways, or some training, I’d be flying around the board in no time. 

“The flexibility of building layouts is good, though, again, it was a little confusing to see why they had so many named views like FOH, Monitor, Theater etc. I assume there’s a rationale behind it but it didn’t help me. I couldn’t see how to set the macro buttons between the fader banks, so I used the ones in the default file and they served me well. Doing the basics was pretty easy to figure out, all the intricate stuff would take some learning and time on the board, for sure.

“To be honest, by default, I don’t like the internet connectivity as a function. The internet can be full of danger and connecting a desk to the internet seems like it could be opening the console up to hackers or malware, I’m sure Midas and its consoles are a small target but what if!? That said, I did manage to get my file off the cloud and load it successfully, so that was nice.

“Groups are easy enough to make. I did some homework and read about Flexi groups — I’m glad I did. Being able to bus from a group to another group before hitting the master is a real gem. Putting the groups where I wanted was another issue, having unrequired aux buses everywhere looked messy and I didn’t love it, but I’m sure I’d get used to it or there’s a way of cleaning that up.

“I used Manchino offline to set a bunch of groups and turn on EQs/comps etc. It seems like a good way to quickly do thing en masse, but also feels like you could dig yourself some holes too. I didn’t use it live on the day, it seems more like a setup function. I didn’t use the Tags at all. I’d seen the name but didn’t know what they did and between the Pop groups, Auxes and VCAs etc, it seemed like I had enough ways to recall channels as needed.

“What I used of the effects seemed nice, especially the delay, and the Distressor copy was lovely, as was the Ocean (Lake) EQ. There’s a good selection of things: the 670 and 1176 were all good to use. I’d like to spend more time with it. It seems like the number of ways you can customise and tailor this console to your needs is deep and amazing. Though a little daunting.”

MIDAS FOREVER?

While touring the UK/Europe in the 1980s, an analogue Midas Pro40 paired with Martin Audio speakers was the preferred system. Those old Midas consoles were simple but had plenty of headroom, great EQ and a strong fat sound. The Heritage D is deep and powerful and would be a fun board to tour now, there’s plenty to explore in the idle hours during rehearsal or soundcheck. 

The Midas Heritage D is a big picture live console for these times. It condenses much of what’s been learnt from the last 20 years and presents it on a modern platform with huge processing power that supports 96kHz resolution, a big channel count and contemporary connectivity. It pushes the future with cloud support, AI source recognition and clever use of metadata.

Midas sees the workflow as a culmination of the H3K and Pro Series consoles the Heritage D replaces, and one of its strengths is helping users set it up the way they want to mix. Midas’ reputation for high sound quality will be maintained and I see the Heritage D as having a long life with firmware updates from time to time. I’ll be interested to see if it becomes rider friendly or an esoteric exotic. Either way it’s a technically impressive and thoroughly modern console that will win friends. Ideal for touring, venues, churches or festivals.

You can’t blame an audiophile, commuter or tech vlogger for unboxing and reviewing a premium-priced product that looks like a prop from ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ (the 1951 version with Michael Rennie, of course) and is the first pair of headphones from one of the world’s most revered microphone manufacturers that also happens to be owned by one of the world’s most revered headphone manufacturers. However, from an audio practitioner’s point of view those reviews were largely irrelevant because they were from people who were not part of the audio production workflow. They weren’t relying on their headphones for making last-minute mix revisions in a traffic-jammed Uber en-route to the mastering session, or mixing a live-streamed concert from in the wings. They weren’t swinging a boom arm and wondering how much of the on-set noise was leaking through the headphones and how much was in the captured sound and would be passed downstream. They weren’t studio managers looking for premium headphones that could withstand repeated falls onto a parquetry floor. They weren’t home studio owners chasing reliable translation without resorting to expensive monitor speakers and the proportionally expensive acoustic treatment required to make the most of them. These were all use scenarios that the NDH20s were designed for but were largely overlooked because the majority of reviewers were simply in search of an enjoyable listening experience, not a professional audio workflow experience. They were the people buying the sound, not making it, and were so far downstream of the professional audio workflow that they might as well be at sea – which is where their highly polarised ‘love them or hate them’ reviews left the NDH20s.

What’s all of this got to do with the NDH30s? More than meets the eye, or ear. Let’s summarise it in two parts…

Firstly, because the closed-back NDH20s inspired so many reviews from beyond their target market it’s reasonable to assume that the open-back NDH30s will do the same – they certainly look like an audiophile follow-up to the more industrial NDH20s. So if you’re obsessively absorbing every review you can find about the NDH30s, pay close to attention to the reviewer’s headphone requirements. If you’re an audio pro and the reviewer’s most critical audio decision is whether to use a conical or elliptical stylus, move on…

Secondly, the NDH30s clarify the NDH20s’ position in the audio workflow while simultaneously providing the missing component in a comprehensive monitoring ecosystem that few, if any, manufacturers offer: a collection of midfield monitors, nearfield monitors, closed-back headphones and open-back headphones that are all voiced to work together, and where each provides a meaningful cross-reference for the others. We’ll come back to that comprehensive monitoring ecosystem later. For now, let’s look at the use scenarios that Neumann has designed the NDH series headphones for.

USE SCENARIOS

The typical professional audio workflow for music production is shown below. There are differences in terminology for other audio-related industries (sound reinforcement, film, television, radio, social media, etc.), but the basic workflow remains the same: the raw sounds must first be captured (mic choice and placement), then cleaned up and combined (editing and/or mixing), and the combined sound must then be prepared for distribution to the consumer (mastering/processing, etc.).

According to Neumann’s website the primary features of the closed-back NDH20s are ‘a linear sound balance, like Neumann’s acclaimed studio monitors’, ‘excellent isolation’ and ‘transparent sound’. These features put them where closed-back headphones should be in the audio production workflow: an emphasis on isolation and fidelity so that upstream audio practitioners can ensure the captured sounds are good enough to pass downstream, while also offering enough accuracy for mixing and sub-mixing situations if necessary.

In comparison, Neumann’s website says the primary features of the open-back NDH30s are ‘a linear sound similar to a perfectly calibrated Neumann loudspeaker system’, a ‘high resolution stereo panorama with precise localisation’, and ‘a transparent, detailed sound image ideal for mixing and mastering’. These features put them where open-back headphones should be in the audio production workflow: an emphasis on fidelity and imaging to ensure the results are good enough to pass further downstream to other audio practitioners or directly to the consumer.

Why am I stating the obvious? Because it’s important to note that Neumann has made very clear distinctions between the use scenarios of the closed-back NDH20s and the open-back NDH30s, and those distinctions remain consistent from the design and construction through to the marketing. However, in the areas where both headphones overlap we see that the components are identical and/or interchangeable, and the tonality is correlated and/or transitional. This suggests that the NDH20s and NDH30s are not just two different types of headphones, they’re a complementary pair where each one’s form follows its own function while overlapping the function of the other – as shown in the illustration above. Together they cover the entire professional audio workflow with sufficient tonal overlap in the editing/mixing use scenarios to allow a smooth transition between them.

I am certain that the world doesn’t need another NDH30 review that assesses them as a stand-alone product. You don’t want to read it, and I don’t want to write it. I’m also certain that, despite having the words ‘Studio Headphone’ clearly displayed on both ear cups just as the NDH20s do, many of those reviews are from outside the Studio Headphone market and will therefore be irrelevant and misguiding to working audio professionals. With those two points in mind this report takes a more contextual approach, looking at who and what the NDH30s are intended for, where they fit into the audio production workflow, where they overlap with the NDH20s, where they differ, and how they fit into Neumann’s evolving monitoring ecosystem.

With all of that background out of the way, let’s dig into the open-back NDH30s with the understanding that comparisons with the closed-back NDH20s are not only inevitable but also meaningful and necessary…

STURDY 30

The NDH30s are sold in the same packaging as the NDH20s: a clamshell cardboard box with a ‘monochrome + orange’ colour scheme, adorned with a close-up image of an ear cup on the front and useful data on the back including technical specs and intended use scenarios. It’s good enough to ship them from the manufacturer to you via numerous forms of transport and handling and storage, so it’s probably good enough for your purposes. Give it a layer of gaffer tape and it should last a lifetime.

Tucked behind a flap in the lid is the expected Quick Start visual guide that unfolds to an A4 page, and a multi-language information sheet that unfolds to an A2 page – although unless you’re multi-lingual only about 5% of that page’s total area will be in a language you can read, and if you are multi-lingual then you’ll be re-reading that same 5% of information in different languages. (PDFs instead of paper, please; anyone who can legitimately afford the NDH30s will have 24/7 internet access.) There’s also a neatly-folded black drawstring carrying bag just like the one supplied with the NHD20s, and it retains the same magical quality of expanding upon first unfolding to ensure it never fits back into the plastic bag you just pulled it out of. It’s a good bag for keeping the headphones and cables together, so use it. If you’re not going to use it, don’t take it out of the plastic bag…

At first glance the NDH30s look similar to the NDH20s with the exception of a grille that indicates their open-back design and visually distinguishes them from the NDH20s. It’s made from a thin sheet of steel, perforated in a honeycomb pattern and coated with a layer of black plastic paint that probably provides some helpful damping. It rises to a small dome in the middle, presumably for reinforcement. Denting it seems unlikely without considerable determination.

The NDH30s’ ear pads use a softer, lighter and less dense material than the memory foam used in the NDH20s, and are about 1cm larger in diameter. They’re more forgiving of the arms/stems of glasses, and are clearly built with an emphasis on comfort rather than isolation.

As with the NDH20s, the cable connects via the right ear cup and there’s an embossed L and R on the headband immediately above each respective ear cup. The L is also embossed in Braille (three vertical dots, aka ‘123’) – a nice touch for the visually-impaired, which includes everyone who has to work in the dark spaces behind-the-scenes. Inside the ear cups is the same orange lining seen in the NDH20s.

In the hands the NDH30s feel as rugged and sturdy as the NDH20s. At 352 grams excluding cable they’re 38 grams lighter than the NDH20s, a minor weight difference when the weight of the cable is factored in. They appear to use the same headband, fittings and aluminium-reinforced plastic parts as the NDH20s, while the ear cups are almost certainly derived from the NDH20s’ CAD files. Although both have the same rated ear cup contact pressure of 5.5N to 6.8N, the NDH30s feel gentler on the head – which is probably due to their larger and softer ear pads spreading that pressure over a larger area around the ears while also leaving more room around the pinnae. Perhaps the slightly lower weight helps here as well, or maybe it’s entirely due to how their open-back design maintains an acoustic connection with the surrounding space. Whatever the case, I’m far less aware of wearing the NDH30s than I am of wearing the NDH20s. They’re very comfortable; I can wear them for hours without giving a sigh of relief after removing them.

When the NDH30s and NDH20s are viewed side-by-side, in or out of their boxes, the overall impression is of a matching pair of tools intended to be used as required – rather like switching between Standard or Phillips screwdrivers from the same set. As smartly complementary as they look, they’re both relatively large and heavy compared to popular headphones such as AudioTechnica’s M50X (closed-back) or BeyerDynamic’s DT990 Pro (open-back). You won’t be throwing a pair of NDH headphones into your bag as a fashion statement or a just-in-case afterthought – they’re designed to be used with intent.

DIAPHRAGMETRICS

Both headphones use a 38mm diaphragm with neodymium magnet. Their voicing suggests that both drivers share many things in common (possibly diaphragm material, suspension method, voice coil wire, etc.), although there’ll be differences at the design level because open-back ear cups present fundamentally different acoustic and electrical parameters for the driver designer to deal with. If the driver designer is aiming for a consistent family voicing between open-back and closed-back headphones, these differences have to be accounted for and the appropriate parameters tweaked accordingly. The NDH30s have a slightly lower impedance than the NDH20s (120 ohms versus 150 ohms) which would make them easier to drive to a given SPL except they also have a significantly lower sensitivity (104dB SPL versus 114dB SPL @ 1kHz) which should make them harder to drive to a given SPL. In practice the perceived level difference between them is quite subtle, but that also depends on how the frequency spectrum of the content aligns with the headphones’ differing frequency responses – sometimes you can switch between them without feeling a need to make any level adjustments, other times you’ll want to. [Headphones and frequency response will be discussed further in my forthcoming article ‘About Headphones’.]

The NDH30s have a wider bandwidth, being 3dB down at 12Hz and 34kHz respectively while the NDH20s are 3dB down at 5Hz and 30kHz. Both extend well above and below the frequency limits of human hearing and it could be argued that the differences between their bandwidths are irrelevant, or at least less relevant than the hard-to-avoid differences between open-back and closed-back designs.

Both have the same maximum input power handling of 1000mW and the same continuous input power handling of 200mW. One interesting difference between the NDH20s and NDH30s is the THD specification. At <0.03% THD (1kHz @ 100dB SPL) the NDH30s outperform the NDH20s rating of <0.1% significantly and noticeably. More about that later…

CABLING

The NDH30s are supplied with a single cable that is 3m long, straight, has a fabric outer sleeve (giving it a deluxe feel), and is a pleasure to wear – quite a contrast to the NDH20s’ rugged but touch-sensitive cables. It’s about the same diameter and weight as the straight cable provided with the NDH20s, but its fabric outer sleeve makes it no more touch-sensitive than any other decent headphone cable. I doubt it would survive as many RCROs as the NDH20s’ ruggedised cables [see ‘Cable Trade-Offs’], but RCROs are not indicated in the NDH30s’ use scenarios so therefore it doesn’t matter.

The end that connects to the headphone amplifier is fitted with the typical 3.5mm three-conductor TRS (Tip Ring Sleeve) jack with screw-on 6.35mm adaptor, but, unlike the cables provided with the NDH20s, the end that connects to the headphones uses a four-conductor 2.5mm TRRS (Tip Ring Ring Sleeve) connector. What’s going on here? That extra ring is not to support a headset mic…

The typical headphone cable contains three inner conductors: one for the left channel signal, one for the right channel signal, and one for the ground (which provides the reference for the left and right channel signals). All three conductors run alongside each other for the length of the cable, making it possible for some of each channels’ signal to be induced into the ground conductor. Because the ground conductor is common to both channels, a small amount of each channel’s signal (i.e. that which is induced into the ground conductor) ultimately becomes part of the other channel’s signal – thereby creating inter-channel crosstalk and reducing the stereo imaging. To minimise this problem the NDH30s’ cable uses two separate ground conductors (one for each channel) running throughout the length of the cable, oriented to minimise crosstalk from either channel’s signal conductor into the other channel’s ground conductor. All of this would be a waste of time if the two ground conductors in the cable were summed back into one conductor when they entered the headphones, of course, so the NDH30s maintain the separate ground wires throughout the headphones as well, all the way to the drivers. Hence the use of a TRRS socket.

Neumann refer to this four-conductor cable as being ‘internally balanced’ and describe the NDH30s’ internal wiring scheme as ‘symmetric’ (which also allows them to be driven by a balanced or differential source if given the right cable). Such terms might sound like pandering to the audiophile snake oil industry but the approach is legitimate, and variations on this theme are also used by reputable audiophile headphone manufacturers. Neumann’s Sebastian Schmitz assures me that the combined benefits of the internally-balanced cable and symmetrical wiring are measurable and audible, and I have no reason to doubt him because a) Neumann don’t do snake oil, and b) the NDH30s do have remarkable stereo imaging.

As it turns out, Neumann had the foresight to use symmetric wiring and the TRRS socket inside the closed-back NDH20s as well – even though the cables supplied with the NDH20s are not ‘internally balanced’. This makes the NDH30s’ cable backward-compatible, bringing its improved imaging benefits to the NDH20s while also overcoming the niggles expressed in ‘Cable Trade-Offs’ when using the NDH20s in situations where pinpoint imaging is more important than cable durability. The NDH30 cable is available separately, and might be a good upgrade for your NDH20s…

ASSESSMENT PROCEDURE

I’m always wary of headphone reviews that are based entirely on how they reproduce music that’s already been released, and therefore sidesteps testing them in all of the use scenarios encountered by audio practitioners. It’s all about relevance, and relevance is defined in the use scenarios. The NDH30s’ use scenarios are mixing and mastering, so using a released recording to assess their performance is relevant from a headphone comparison point of view, but it can’t be the only metric because it doesn’t involve actually using them for mixing or mastering. With that in mind I used the NDH30s to re-mix some of my own multitrack sessions, re-master some of my direct-to-stereo recordings of live chamber music performances, and also to undertake some serious work on a selection of live performance desk mixes for a client’s promo video. In situations where the NDH30s’ use scenario overlapped the NDH20s’ use scenario (primarily editing and mixing), I often cross-referenced between the NDH30s and NDH20s to expose and explore differences between them.

Throughout this process I was using CEntrance’s USB bus-powered DACport HD headphone amplifier connected to my Macbook Pro or iPad Pro, using numerous DAW apps and audiophile music player apps in accordance with the NDH30s’ use scenarios of mixing and mastering. For some assessments I went back to putting the raw wav files on SD cards and used the headphone amplifier built into my Nagra Seven field recorder, emulating a ‘capture’ use scenario in which isolation wasn’t required (e.g. in a dedicated recording room inside a concert hall). Between the DACport HD and the Nagra Seven I’d covered the typical circuit topologies the NDH30s would be driven by without resorting to a dedicated mains-powered headphone amplifier – which could possibly deliver better results but at the expense of portability. I didn’t bother testing the NDH30s with the headphone sockets built into my 2013 Macbook Pro and my 2017 iPad Pro due to earlier experiences with the NDH20s: on some material the Macbook Pro’s internal headphone amp struggled with the low frequencies while the iPad Pro’s internal headphone amp was unnecessarily bright. Since switching to CEntrance’s DACport HD I don’t have to deal with those sorts of problems and uncertainties, and I’d assume similar performance would be available from any of the pocket-sized USB bus-powered headphone amps from Audioquest, Chord et al, and perhaps even the headphone amplifiers built into USB bus-powered interfaces. If you don’t need the portability and don’t need an interface, check out the headphone amps from Schiit Audio…

LISTENING EVALUATIONS

For the ‘listening only’ part of this report I used a number of my favourite reference recordings – some well-produced and engineered albums, some borderline albums that highlight a monitoring system’s ability to reveal mix issues and other problems, some that I knew very well because I was part of the audio production workflow, and others for which I was the entire audio production workflow. When making assessments with these reference albums I like to close my eyes and pretend I’m sitting at the controls during the final playback, listening for any last-minute changes I’d want to make: an EQ tweak here, a compressor tweak there, a tad more reverb, whatever. This approach shifts my listening focus towards what the headphones reveal in practice, which is far more relevant than whether or not they provide an enjoyable listening experience. It’s also a lot of fun.

Kind Of Bloud

Starting the day with fresh ears, the first reference was the classic ‘Kind of Blue’ by km Davis (I live in a metric country). Although primarily intended as a ‘feel good’ warm up listen, it is rich in performance noises that remind us of the importance of serving the music first and foremost – anyone who has ruined a sax sound by obsessively EQing out mouth/lip noise will understand this. It also revealed something very important about the NDH30s. Fifteen minutes into the album, approaching the toe-tapping end of ‘Freddie Freeloader’, one of the members of the co-working space sided up to me and whispered something inaudible. Removing the headphones so I could hear properly, she whispered, “What are you listening to?” “Kind of Blue, by Kilometres Davis.” “Kind of Blue? Well, it’s Kind of Loud…” Realising how loud it was coming from the headphones in my hand, I replied with appropriate surprise, “Oh, it is Kind of Loud!” Stifled giggles throughout the co-working space implied that others had long been enjoying (or politely tolerating) the horns of Davis, Coltrane and Adderley leaking through the NDH30s’ open-back ear cups.

What does this experience tell us? Monitoring at unintentionally high SPLs is a common occurrence the first time you use monitors that have significantly lower distortion than you’re used to. For any given monitoring system, over time the ear/brain system learns to associate a certain level of distortion with a certain perceived loudness. When you first change to a monitoring system with significantly lower distortion there’s a subconscious tendency to turn it up until it reaches the distortion level you’re familiar with because that’s when it feels like it is at the level you’re used to. If your new monitoring system has 6dB less distortion than your old monitoring system, on your first listen you could be inadvertently turning the SPL up to 6dB higher than you would normally use because that’s when it feels like it’s at the right level. It won’t be until you try to talk to someone next to you while music is playing that you’ll catch yourself saying “Oh, it’s kind of loud!” I’ve experienced this phenomenon many times, and in every case it has been an indicator of significantly lower distortion from unfamiliar monitors.

At <0.03% the NDH30s’ THD is significantly lower than the NDH20s’ THD, which is already very low at <0.1%. That’s certainly enough of a difference to explain the significant increase of playback level on my first listening of a known reference in a subconscious attempt to reach an SPL that intuitively felt right after spending so long listening with the NDH20s. This ‘low distortion, high SPL’ experience also confirmed the DACport HD’s ability to drive the NDH30s to high SPLs without any audible signs of distress, thereby confirming the NDH30s’ portability.

Realising that I had probably raised my hearing threshold significantly and left my ears in no shape for critical listening, I put the NDH30s away for the day. With refreshed ears I started the next morning by methodically acclimatising my ears to the closed-back NDH20s, imprinting their familiar sound into my perception and getting my monitoring levels right. Then I switched to the NDH30s, made a few careful back-and-forth tweaks to match the SPL, and got on with it. Note that I was monitoring at what I felt was somewhere around 83dB SPL, just like a calibrated studio monitor system would use and as explained in my NDH20 field report. That’s the kind of SPL the NDH series are voiced for, and it’s where you should be using them if you want to get the best out of them.

I listened to many reference recordings through this process and took copious notes, mostly of appeal to audiophiles rather than audio practitioners. Instead of boring you to death with such flourished meanderings, you’ll find a hastily edited version of them tacked on the end of this report – it was never intended to be part of this review but it didn’t take long to tidy up, and we’re not in print so the page count is not an issue. (Yo publishers, see what I did there?) Maybe you’ll find some value in it. Scroll down to ‘Copious Notes’.

WORKFLOW EVALUATIONS

The take-away of the listening tests mentioned above was that the NDH30s deserved serious consideration, so I put them to work on a handful of mixing and mastering tasks. I also fired up my Grover Notting CR1 desktop cross-reference monitors to double-check the spatial, balance and translation decisions that can be difficult to get right when working solely on headphones. Two of these tasks were particularly revealing, one for mixing and the other for mastering. They’re both discussed below.

Mixing: Samples & Bansuri

This multitrack session file consists of a layered backing track made from samples with an improvised bansuri (bamboo flute) part recorded over it. I’ve used it in numerous classrooms, studios and auditoria for over a decade to demonstrate a common problem that occurs when composers use the highly produced/polished sounds from sample libraries to create a backing track to support their solo acoustic instrument performances. Without the skills to give their solo instrument recording the same level of production/polishing heard in the sampled sounds the result is invariably a karaoke mix, i.e. a solo track that is spectrally, spatially and dynamically out of perspective with the backing track it has been plastered over.

The mix that the session opens with is the culmination of many iterations of this demonstration, mixing and tweaking for the best translation through numerous playback and monitoring systems. As such, I wasn’t expecting any surprises when hearing it through the NDH30s and there weren’t any. However, openings were revealed for some worthwhile refinements.

The backing track is built around a kick drum accompanied by a sustained bass drone, adorned with other percussive instruments and pads. Over numerous mix iterations through different monitors in different acoustic environments over many years, the lowest octaves of the kick drum and the bass drone had settled at very conservative levels to avoid becoming boomy when demonstrated through poor speaker systems and/or in acoustically untreated spaces. The conservative level of the low frequencies and the bandwidth they exist within (unoccupied by any other instruments) creates a slightly bass-shy mix that’s easily corrected when you have access to accurate low frequency monitoring, and that’s exactly what happened with the NDH30s. Having experienced how accurately they reproduce low frequencies and reveal their related harmonics during the earlier listening evaluations, I had no qualms in trusting what the NDH30s were telling me when EQing the kick drum and the bass drone individually while simultaneously locking in their harmonic relationship to enhance the overall musicality. I even removed the subtle ducking I had been using for years on the bass drone (triggered by the kick), finding I was getting a much better result with carefully-sculpted EQ.

With the low frequency spectrum sorted, I then found myself making tiny adjustments throughout the mix to fine-tune things further. By this stage the mix sounded good through the NDH30s and the NDH20s. I was able to give it even more ‘resilience’ (i.e. improved translation through a broad range of playback systems) after a few cross-reference listens switching between the NDH headphones and the Grover Notting CR1s, tweaking any sounds that were struggling to be clearly represented on smaller speaker systems while also making sure the levels of spatial effects (reverb, etc.) remained acceptable through headphones and speakers. This was a very satisfying result that also reinforced what I’ve been practising and preaching for years: with a good pair of headphones, a good pair of small cross-reference monitors, the right metering and a bit of experience you can get by without bigger monitors and the associated acoustic treatment required to make the most of them.

Mastering: Piano & Violin Duo

This was a two-mic direct-to-stereo recording of violinist Benjamin Beilman and pianist Andrew Tyson performing in concert at City Recital Hall, Sydney (October 10, 2016), captured with a spaced pair of Sennheiser MKH8020 omnis into my Nagra Seven field recorder. The piano/violin duo is always difficult to capture well when using only a stereo pair above the audience; it pits one of the smallest orchestral instruments against one of the largest. The edited and mastered recording was well received when it went to air all those years ago, but when I recently found it on YouTube I felt that the violin was sometimes dominated by the piano. Ever since then I’ve wanted to re-visit this recording, and preparing this report gave me the appropriate motivation. Loading the original wav files into my Nagra Seven and listening back through its built-in headphone amplifier, the NDH30s showed that the raw recording did not sound as good as I’d hoped to hear. The tonalities of the individual instruments were acceptable but the violin was just managing to hold its own against the piano, and this was mostly due to the duo’s well-balanced playing skills rather than my mic placement skills.

Opening the original DAW session showed that I’d created an increase in the violin’s perceived level with some global EQ, enough to keep it present but not as present as I was hoping to hear, and this was probably helped along by the broadcaster’s on-air processing – so it sounded acceptable on-air but not on YouTube. Being well-acquainted with the NDH30s by this time, I bypassed the previous processing and tackled the job again.

There is no mixing stage for a two-mic direct-to-stereo recording such as this; there’s one mic for the left channel signal, one mic for the right channel signal, and that’s it. The audio production workflow is reduced to capture, edit and master. After double-checking my edits on the NDH20s – taking advantage of their isolation for checking the crossfades and following the fade-outs down to a deeper level of silence than I could reach with the NDH30s or CR1s – this was now essentially a stereo mix ready for mastering.

Photos from the concert set-up showed that the MKH8020s were spaced about 50cm apart (i.e. AB50 technique) and about 4m from the centre of the piano’s keyboard. At this spacing and distance each mic captures essentially the same levels of violin and piano, and the stereo image is created by the arrival time differences between when each instrument’s sound reaches each mic. It was a narrow image in terms of articulation, with the violin’s bowing sounds marginally to the left of centre and the piano’s hammer sounds marginally to the right. The piano’s low frequencies dominated the levels of both tracks but were localised to the right side, of course, creating the lopsided image weighting one often gets when recording piano/violin duos in this two-mic direct-to-stereo manner. I knew I had some room to move if I could introduce some amplitude differences between the two channels.

A high pass filter (35Hz, 0.7 Q) cleaned up the subsonic noises of the room and audience, while also saving most speaker systems from struggling to reproduce frequencies that are below their range – which can adversely affect how well they reproduce frequencies within their range. The lowest note on the grand piano, A₀, has a fundamental frequency of 27.5Hz at which point the HPF was about 6dB down. This was a compromise I was willing to accept considering a) the total musical value that A₀ might contribute to 75 minutes of music from five different compositions spanning over 200 years, b) the HPF would really only affect A₀’s fundamental frequency, which was so low that most speakers/rooms would struggle to reproduce it accurately anyway, and c) the 2nd harmonic of A₀ (2 x 27.5 = 55Hz) and all harmonics above it would remain mostly unaffected and thereby represent the note sufficiently through most speaker systems. Switching the HPF on and off while monitoring through the NDH30s, with their extended LF response, showed an obvious improvement in cleanliness and clarity with no apparent impact on the music itself. In a more serious situation I would use a spectral view of the entire session to identify the lowest frequency of musical interest and work from there, but the approach described above was sufficient for this ‘after the fact’ purpose.

With the habitual sonic housekeeping out of the way, it was time to introduce some level differences to address the balance and imaging issues. Pulling the right channel’s level down by 2dB moved the overall image slightly to the left, which created a more pleasing image to begin with, and seemed to create a bit more separation between the two instruments – at least when heard in the NDH30s. This was a good start…

The mics used for this recording (Sennheiser MKH8020s) are known for their rich and solid low frequency response, which adds a healthy weight to the sound of a grand piano. Although this is generally considered ‘a good thing’, in this case it made the piano too big in comparison to the violin. A subtle low frequency shelving cut (approx. -2dB, 107Hz, 0.68 Q) applied at differing levels on each channel (bigger cut on the left, smaller cut on the right) made the piano slightly smaller without affecting the lower end of the violin’s range, thereby making the violin relatively bigger. Similarly, a subtle high frequency shelving cut (approx -0.6dB, 3385Hz, 0.5 Q) applied at differing levels to both channels mellowed the piano’s attack without affecting the violin’s upper harmonics to the same extent, essentially moving the violin forward of the piano in the image. Finally, a small dip in the upper midrange (-0.4dB, 2122Hz, 1.22 Q) across both channels tamed some edginess in the violin bowing and some glassiness in the piano that had become more obvious after the low frequency cuts described above. Collectively, the high frequency shelving cuts and the upper midrange dip described above had the added benefit of thickening the pizzis and bringing out a sense of ‘wood’ in the violin’s tone while also sweetening its higher notes – as heard in Janacek’s ‘Violin Sonata’ and Saint-Saens’ ‘Sonata no 1 in D minor op 75’.

With those changes in place the two instruments were now considerably closer to the much-desired ‘even balance’ point where either musician can play assertively to step forward in the mix without being too loud, or play reservedly to move back into accompaniment without being too soft. Cross-checking on the NDH20s and Grover Notting CR1s confirmed that all was good with the level and tonal balance determined with the NDH30s. It now sounded consistently acceptable when auditioned through the NDH30s, the NDH20s, and the CR1s. If this recording was destined for release I would’ve spent more time refining it as described above, but for the purposes of this report I’d heard enough. With the NDH30s I was able to identify relatively small tonal issues between channels on a two-mic direct-to-stereo recording, even at very low frequencies, and confidently correct or utilise them to my favour.

As an interesting footnote to the above: I enjoyed listening to the newly mastered version of this recording more through the NDH20s than I did through the NDH30s. I believe this was primarily due to the NDH20s’ greater isolation and correspondingly greater sonic ‘chiaroscuro’: their isolation providing a sonically blacker background that, in turn, made the upper midrange and subtle highs sound clearer and cleaner. The NDH20s’ isolation also helped reveal the barely audible (pp) violin mutterings that followed a recurring phrase in the 4th movement of the Janacek, which were sometimes hard to hear in the NDH30s due to their open-back design and the soft hum of the air-conditioning in my listening space.

Between the low self-noise of the MKH8020s (10dBA), the respectfully quiet audience and the processing described above (particularly the sculpting of the low frequencies), this recording achieved a very ‘black’ background that was more readily appreciated in the NDH20s than it was in the NDH30s. However, I doubt I would’ve got it to that point using the NDH20s alone because the tonal screwdriver work described above falls outside of their use scenario. It is exactly what the NDH30s are designed for, however, and they made it fast and easy to achieve.

SUMMARISED IMPRESSIONS

If you’ve read this far you’ll know that I performed numerous listening tests with the NDH30s using finished recordings that had already been through the entire audio production workflow, from capture to distribution. You’ll also know that I put the NDH30s to work in numerous real-world applications within their use scenarios, two of which were detailed above.

The following provides an overall summary of the NDH30s’ sonic performance based on the listening tests and the real-world applications, and often using the NDH20s as a point of comparison.

Spectral Balance

The most obvious thing to note is that the NDH30s have slightly more energy in the upper mids and highs than the NDH20s. The NDH20s initially seemed a bit heftier in the bottom end, but that impression proved to be due to their comparatively subdued midrange and highs – they didn’t have more bottom end, they were just marginally darker. [See ‘Subby Kicks’ in the Copious Notes below…]

In my field report for the closed-back NDH20s I commented that they sounded less like headphones and more like a calibrated monitoring speaker system, describing their slightly subdued upper mids and highs as follows: “They seem to have been ‘voiced’ to put a metre or two of air between you and the drivers, just like studio monitors – except they’re up against your ears, leaving nowhere for small details to hide.” Interestingly, for the open-back NDH30s Neumann’s website specifically states that they have ‘a linear sound, similar to a perfectly calibrated Neumann loudspeaker system’, and later refers to similarities with a speaker monitoring system that has been calibrated via Neumann’s MA1 Monitor Alignment system. The designers at Neumann have pulled off this ‘making headphones that sound like calibrated studio monitors’ trick in a far less obvious manner than they did (or could?) with the closed-back NDH20s. [Headphones, frequency response and calibration will be discussed further in my forthcoming article ‘About Headphones’.]

Also of note is the NDH30s’ performance in the low and low midrange bandwidths. The low frequency performance is very similar on both NDH headphones, but the NDH30s’ significantly lower THD, more prominent midrange and open-back design collectively allows them to resolve greater detail in the lower midrange than the closed-back NDH20s can, making it easier to identify and work within the harmonics of low frequency instruments. In addition to enabling precise tonal sculpting of kick drums and similar weighty sounds, this also makes it easier to pull off the old bass guitar trick of reducing the fundamental frequencies while boosting the second harmonics (i.e. an octave above the fundamentals). Performed subtly – typically with careful application of two low frequency shelves – this trick automagically makes the bass sound clearer and bigger in the mix while clearing some space in the spectrum for the kick’s fundamental frequency to propel and punctuate the music like it’s supposed to. You already knew how to do that trick, of course, but with the NDH30s you can do it faster and better.

Previously unheard details that were revealed in the closed-back NDH20s with just a bit of careful listening are easier to find and more detailed in the open-back NDH30s provided there isn’t too much external noise coming from your listening environment. If an intentionally backgrounded sound was sufficiently audible in one pair without being too obvious in the other, it was probably at just the right level. This was a recurring observation throughout my NDH30 listening tests, and often lead me back to the NDH20s to see how they presented the same small details. (A good test for this kind of low level resolution is to intentionally turn an instrument’s level down in the mix until it is barely audible through one monitoring system, then check its audibility through the other monitoring system.)

Imaging & Depth

Many moons ago I created some imaging test signals consisting of frequency sweeps and short bursts of pink noise that pass through/across the stereo image. Originally intended to demonstrate the differences between intensity-based stereophony (as used by the pan pot and all coincident microphone pairs) and time-based stereophony (as used in AB microphone pairs), it has also proven to be a great test for the stereo imaging abilities of speakers and headphones. When localising the image via headphones or speakers, the smaller the ‘dot’ of sound is localised in the stereo image, the better the matching of the drivers and the better overall imaging you can expect from them. With the NDH30s the ‘dot’ is very small and well-defined, with none of the shifting or blurring at some frequencies that indicates a mismatch between drivers. It is the most ‘pin-point’ left-to-right imaging I can recall hearing in headphones.

I’ve always found depth much harder to judge on headphones than on speakers. With the NDH30s it’s quite easy to get a feel for relative depth (how much closer one instrument is compared to another) and to a lesser extent absolute depth (how far an instrument is from the listener in a direct-to-stereo recording), but in a recording/mixing situation I’d still want to cross-reference this kind of spatial stuff on speakers. I should also point out that I think both headphones do an excellent job of reproducing depth as far as headphones are concerned, but in different ways. Beyond the qualities that both headphones have in common, the NDH20s’ depth reproduction is helped along by their high isolation and associated blackness, while the NDH30s’ depth reproduction is helped along by their excellent imaging and lower distortion.

DIFFERENT HORSE, SAME SADDLE…

There is a consistent family tonality to be heard in the open-back NDH30s and their closed-back counterpart the NDH20s, but do they sound the same? No, because they’re not supposed to sound the same. Rather, they reflect an understanding that there’s no such thing as a single pair of headphones for all use scenarios. When it comes to passive headphones that you can easily slip on and off and pass around to others, there are two contrasting realities: the highest isolation requires closed-back ear cups, while the highest fidelity requires open-back ear cups. It is better to make a correlating series of headphones in which each pair capitalises on the strengths of its fundamental design, rather than compromising those strengths in an attempt to make them sound the same.

The NDH20s exploit the strengths of closed-back ear cups in accordance with their use scenario, and do a remarkable job of delivering high isolation with high fidelity. The NDH30s exploit the strengths of open-back ear cups in accordance with their use scenario, and their lack of isolation allows them to deliver even higher fidelity. Switching from the NDH20s to the NDH30s mid-workflow – in accordance with their use scenarios – shows that it’s easy to transition from one to the other at the appropriate time without any major disruptions because they are ultimately variations on the same tonality. The NDH30s pick up where the NDH20s leave off in the professional audio workflow, trading isolation for higher fidelity. It’s rather like changing horses midstream but keeping the same saddle so it doesn’t feel too different.

CONCLUSION

Unlike the NDH20s, the NDH30s’ tonality is not something you need to be aware of when working with them. I don’t feel like I have to keep remembering that they’re slightly bright, slightly dull, slightly bass heavy, slightly forward, slightly reserved or slightly whatever. In fact, they sound just about right. They’re one of the few headphones I’ve used that get out of the way and don’t require compensating for any particular characteristic – beyond the considerations that all headphones require when making decisions regarding panning and spatial effects. So where do they fit in the audio production workflow, and are they for you?

The closed-back NDH20s give you the isolation and fidelity required for the initial structural work of capturing, editing and blending sounds. The open-back NDH30s take over from the NDH20s when isolation is no longer needed, providing the higher fidelity required to zoom in for the finer detailed work of sculpting sounds, blending them together and polishing the end result. They’re both voiced to work well alongside Neumann’s KH series of studio monitors, so if you’re experienced with using accurate monitors you shouldn’t have any problems working with either of the NDH series headphones.

If you can only afford one pair of headphones and had to choose between the NDH20s and NDH30s, let that decision be made by whether or not you need isolation. If you mostly work in the capture and live mixing side of the audio workflow (e.g. sound reinforcement, live streaming, etc.) where isolation is vital, you’ll get by very well with a pair of NDH20s and a modicum of restraint in the high frequencies as explained in my earlier NDH20 field report. If you mostly work in the studio mixing and mastering side of the audio workflow, where isolation is not a requirement, you’ll definitely appreciate and benefit from the higher fidelity of the NDH30s.

If you’re a solo operator doing the entire audio workflow from start to finish, or an audio factotum who can jump in and out of the workflow at any point, it makes sense to have both. The NDH20/NDH30 combo covers all use scenarios with two complementary headphones that provide a smooth transition from one to the other, while leaving little doubt about which pair to use and when. Rather than giving you conflicting versions of the same sound and leaving you uncertain as to which version to trust, they provide correlated versions from different perspectives. There’s no need to do the fingers-crossed ‘line of best fit’ mix because it’s unlikely that one pair will tell you something is good if the other pair tells you it’s bad. The NDH20/NDH30 combo may seem like an expensive solution but it’s chicken feed compared to the cost of studio monitors that are capable of equivalent performance, and forms a highly portable reference that is independent of room acoustics.

After using the NDH30s for some time now, individually and alongside the NDH20s, it’s clear that what I suspected in my NDH20 field report is true: Neumann’s foray into the headphone market was not simply an exercise in selling re-badged headphones from Sennheiser (its parent company). The NDH range, as it currently stands at least, is part of an evolving monitoring ecosystem based on understanding the professional audio workflow, assessing the monitoring needs of audio practitioners within that workflow, and designing an intersecting set of monitoring tools to meet those needs.

Many other manufacturers offer excellent closed-back and open-back headphones but I’ve yet to hear a headphone tag-team that works as synergistically as the NDH20/NDH30 combo, let alone one that also correlates with a range of monitor speakers built around the same design philosophy. Very few professional headphone manufacturers also make professional studio monitors, and even fewer can combine Neumann’s deep understanding of the professional audio workflow with the headphone design expertise of a company like Sennheiser and the monitor design expertise of a company like Klein & Hummel (the ‘KH’ in Neumann’s monitor speaker model numbers). No wonder they’ve created such a carefully delineated and correlating range of monitoring products.

If you’re in the market for a pair of open-back headphones, either to round-out an existing monitoring system or as the first step towards a new monitoring system, be sure to audition the NDH30s. If nothing else, they’ll provide an excellent data point that might even convince you to re-assess your budget. On that note, I’m going to close with a small but telling anecdote. At one point during the six months of testing and taking notes for this report I chatted on social media with an aspiring young engineer who was on the hunt for good headphones. After considering his increasingly bleak opinions of the headphones he’d been auditioning within his price range, I recommended auditioning the NDH30s as a point of reference. After doing so he replied: “Oh that’s what headphones are supposed to sound like.” Indeed. In those nine words he’d unknowingly summarised the thousands of words I’ve written above. “My work here is done” I stammered, slipping the NDH30s into their drawstring bag and fading into the shadows…