BOMBS AWAY

So how does it sound? Well, it quickly becomes apparent within the first half hour or so of use that the B-Dyn 611B compressor is no shrinking violet. While it can be set to more subtle gain reduction tasks, the real fun happens when the ratio control hits 1:4 and beyond, and the threshold nudges up towards maximum. The reward for these relatively forthright settings is a very pleasing and quite aggressive tonal saturation and pumping. Fine tuning the attack and release settings can really soften or harden the angles here, with the impact and quality of the transients being fully malleable, and, of course, the overall bombast can be gently eased off by simply backing off the threshold and/or ratio to taste. More extreme settings can make an acoustic guitar feel like it’s being strummed twice as hard, drums feel like they’re being punished by heavy-handed body builders and vocals feel like they’re being delivered under duress by an adrenalised vocalist six inches from your face. The sounds are big, bold yet pleasingly musical, and I found in many instances that ‘too much’ was actually about right!

SSL notes that the compressor’s threshold has a built in make-up gain circuit. I found this feature to be a bit hit and miss in practice, with the output levels jumping around a fair bit when toggling between ratios. Be prepared to work some manual make-up gain moves if you really want to explore the more aggressive side of the B-Dyn’s sounds, which of course you do! The DS settings are quite dramatic when enabled, pulling the overall level back and really clamping sibilance right down at higher settings. By spending time tweaking the controls, some very natural and eminently useable de-essing results are available here, though they do come at the expense of the other compression effects. Listening to the smooth, non-destructive results I was reminded again that hardware solutions can still do the de-essing job in a more seamless fashion than most software equivalents.

SHUT THE GATE

While the compressor and de-esser circuits impressed me with their colour and flexibility, these are far from the only tricks up the B-Dyn’s sleeve. Similar to the de-esser’s smoothness in operation, the gate circuit is very musical and useful in a range of applications. I spent some time working with a driving tom-and-snare beat and, once I had the compressor working pretty hard and the saturation nicely dialled in (with the sidechain filter keeping the bottom end nicely intact), applying the gate was the perfect cherry on top. Where the higher resonances of the snare were starting to get a little out of control due to the characteristics of the dynamics, the gate allowed me to fine tune how much ring and sustain carried through. I was surprised at the variety of ‘finishes’ I could conjure up: from slightly tightened up, to dry and clipped (but not in a bad way). On a mid-volume vocal I could lift the focus and intensity via a liberal dose of compression but use the gate to minimise the exaggerated breaths and other ‘in-between-lines’ sounds. The end result was a clean but noticeably more punchy and present vocal.

The expander shares the compressor’s aggressive character and while it can achieve good results at lower settings, needs to be used more carefully to avoid gate-like drop outs. I found the expander less useful than the gate but, being in most instances a corrective tool, this is probably the feature of the unit least likely to garner regular use and is still a handy feature.

FUN MACHINE

As you can probably gather by now, I’m a big fan of the B-Dyn 611B. The wallop and harmonic distortion this unit delivers is extremely fun to work with and it has that ineffably pleasing analogue ‘thing’ that keeps the results musical and useful across a range of applications from voice to drums, synths to guitars. Quite capable of transparent control at lower settings, if you take more of a ‘guitar pedal’ mentality to tweaking it, the B-dyn absolutely rocks! It’s a sound that will work well in many genres but seems particularly suited to rock ’n roll, beat-based material and electronic music where plentiful grit and attitude is required. While the controls are a little limited compared to the more feature-rich compressors out there, the addition of a very musical gate, de-essing and an expander circuit means the B-dyn is much more than a one-trick pony. Take the SSL B-dyn for a test drive but be warned, once you hear it in action you won’t want to give it back!

SOUND & VISION

While its easy to get carried away with all the digital add-ons, one fundamental fact needs to be stated: the ADAM A7V is a great-sounding, high quality monitor. Perhaps the most glowing recommendation I can offer is that I had the use of the ADAM A7Vs for about a month and, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool Quested user, once I plugged the A7Vs in, I didn’t once consider switching back over to my tried and trusted midfields. I found the A7Vs immediately sat well with me in Pure mode and I mixed several albums worth of material on them without any qualms. I really liked their tonal presentation which has a lovely even feel through the frequency range. They didn’t fatigue me, they didn’t feel exaggerated in any tonal area, and they presented my mixes in a pleasing but still detailed and forensic way that allowed for accurate EQ and effect placement.

The bottom end is pleasingly solid for a pair of nearfield speakers and the sound certainly isn’t ‘small’.They translated well on a range of different media and also delivered a big sound that lacked nothing in weight down low.

The A7Vs can get quite loud and their imaging and tonal coherence easily reaches the back of my 8m-deep room, filling the space beautifully.

These speakers are worth every cent of their asking price just in Pure mode, but of course I very much enjoyed seeing and hearing what else the ADAMs could do. UNR mode is a good second option with a generous dollop of bass bloom and lower midrange thickness immediately apparent. I found this setting more useful for general musical enjoyment and a second opinion on low-end sources but I preferred Pure for day-to-day mix work.

The onboard EQ is also useful and offers well-judged stepped settings to address bass, midrange and high frequency issues. When I’m working on my Quested V2108s I prefer a slight top-end roll off for long mixing sessions. I didn’t feel that need with the ADAMs and left the Room Adaptation EQ flat. This is, of course, very much a room by room, user by user proposition, but the options cover a good range of tonal tweaking where required.

CALIBRATION ASSIGNATION

I reviewed the Sonarworks Sound ID room measurement and calibration software last year for AT so, being familiar with the process, it was a fairly straightforward exercise to update the software and test out the ADAMs using the Sound ID Reference microphone. The response curve for the A7Vs in my room at a listening position of around a meter and a half from each speaker showed several prominent peaks in the low end and lower midrange with a steep roll off below 60Hz. From 700Hz to 1.5kHz there was a less pronounced dip and the top end response gently descended from 7kHz on up. Having captured my listening point’s frequency portrait, the next step was to name and save this as an Adam Audio supported preset and export the corrective calibration EQ into the speakers’ onboard memory. To do this I ensured my speakers were networked to my computer and opened the A Control software, using the drop down menu in the upper left corner of the control panel to import the file. This brings the calibration curve into play via the Sonarworks logo button in A Control, but in order to save the setting into the speakers themselves its necessary to do a secondary save on shutdown of the software. This instances a short reboot of the monitors whereupon the setting is physically saved in each speaker and can be selected on the back panel independently of the software (and ethernet cables). Once this was all in place it was a satisfying experience to toggle through the various voicings and hear the A7Vs respond with quite different sonic presentations.

Room correction is a curious and complex business. There are many ways to use the SoundID program but at its heart is a corrective EQ that seeks to produce a completely flat response. When this EQ is engaged it becomes immediately apparent that ‘flat’ does not necessarily equal ‘right’ in terms of monitoring. In my case the resulting sound through the ADAMs lost a lot of bottom end information and the top end became overly bright to my ears. Overall the sound coming out of the speakers suddenly felt unsatisfying and thin. While this setting might be useful for short periods of forensic listening (particularly for issues in the upper frequencies), I would not want to do long hours of mixing with it. As when I previously reviewed this software, I found it most useful when backed off to around 40% using SoundID’s wet/dry control. I found these settings to be particularly useful for checking my mixes in shorter forensic listening sessions, and this was a great adjunct to the Pure setting that I favoured for general tracking and mixing. Sonarworks offers several other ways to modify the raw correction curves as well as simulations of car, laptop and headphone presets and these are also well worth exploring.

DEVILISHLY DETAILED

If the back panel Room Adaptation EQ with its mirrored A Control software doesn’t quite have your tweak freak needs covered then the Advanced Adaptation option surely will. This six-band parametric EQ allows for more dramatic and surgical cuts and boosts and, while the digital control layout feels a little cramped and no-frills compared to the other features of the A Control software, there’s no doubting it allows for finer tuning and more nuanced EQ shaping than the other options. It must be said that all this tonal shaping comes on top of what are beautifully natural-sounding speakers, so inexperienced engineers in particular should proceed with a degree of caution where there’s so many tone-shaping tools up for grabs.

Ultimately, customising the voicing of your speakers should be about helping you make the right mix decisions that, in turn, lead to great translation across a range of listening devices. This takes time, a bit of experimentation, and the experience of working on a number of different projects and types of material, to fully dial in. With the A7V’s great starting-point sounds and flexible tools, combined with Sound ID software’s room measurement information, this goal should be achievable even in the most problematic spaces. In a good-sounding space the Pure mode is a joy to work with and I’d happily recommend the ADAM A7Vs to anyone looking for a quality set of nearfield monitors that won’t break the bank.

Review: Greg Walker

VOTE FOR THE VOICE

The U87 was and is a studio favourite because of its great tonal balance and versatility. Unlike its tube-driven siblings it derived its goodness from the then-newly introduced FET circuitry, presenting a controlled low end and midrange with a clear and detailed voicing in the top end (sonically think transformers instead of valves). In the 70’s and 80’s many studios sold off their old valve U47s and U67s in favour of the new FET model and the U87 became the studio vocal mic of choice through those decades and beyond. To see if the Bock could compete sonically with my venerable U87 I put it through its paces during a busy month of sessions. 

The Bock’s first job was on a female backing vocal session and the mic delivered a  lovely controlled result with airy highs, balanced midrange and (where required) a nice touch of magnification in the bass register thanks to a useful proximity effect. The tracks sat in the mix effortlessly and required little or no processing, although I found the Bock did pick up quite a lot of sibilance (easily tamed with a touch of de-essing).

A subsequent lead vocal session with powerhouse Melbourne singer-songwriter R.W. Grace confirmed my impression of the Bock 187 as a wonderful vocal mic. The subtly flattering, yet well balanced, tone is indeed reminiscent of the Neumann U87. The Bock sits vocals beautifully in the mix and the results on both male and female vocals take EQ and compression extremely well. It’s easy to achieve both natural, unaffected presentations and more hyped, processed sounds that place the voice front and centre in a pleasing way. I tried a variety of tube and solid state preamps and the results always impressed both me and the singer. 

Moving onto instrument recording I found the Bock to be an excellent all-rounder. On piano and acoustic guitar, the mic is detailed yet warm and true. Strings and percussion sound lively but controlled with the top end being quite responsive to nuanced performances. Both double and electric bass greatly benefitted from the Bock’s combination of solid low to midrange tone and, once again, that detail in the top end. Ditto with guitar amps where power and clarity were both readily on tap. On drum overheads, I found the Bock picked out some frequencies on my kit that were less flattering, and I would probably choose other mics over the Bock in this application, at least in my room. This was my only slight reservation in an otherwise excellent time with the mic.

ACE OF BASS

It’s worth mentioning here that the ‘Fat’ switch on the back of the mic is well worth exploring. The top-end character of the mic doesn’t change but rather the lower frequencies are boosted between 10Hz and 400Hz lending the Bock a different personality. The difference is quite noticeable but not overwhelming and I found this to be a great feature. Extra bottom end on sources like bass guitars, kick drums and even certain vocals are certainly a very handy option. The Fat setting is also great for tracking overly bright instruments and naturally sitting certain sources further back in the mix. The ‘two mics in one’ moniker can sometimes seem like a bit of a cheap sales strategy but in this case it greatly widens the user’s options when problem solving or looking for tonal variety.

SOMETHING COMPARES TO YOU

Last but not least, I decided to do a shootout between the Bock 187 and my vintage Neumann U87. I generally find that acoustic guitars and vocals display a mic’s personality more than just about anything else so I did some tracking of the above with the mics side by side through a pair of Retro valve preamps. The results were intriguing: both mics sounded great and tonally they were very similar, especially in the overall framing and textural presentation of these complex sounds. The U87 has a certain silkiness about the upper frequencies that the Bock doesn’t quite reproduce, while down low the U87 has a tad more mud where the Bock stays a little clearer. In other ways the two mics are very well matched; sibilance and proximity effect are almost identical. The differences are really quite subtle and in my view UA and Bock have done an impressive job of capturing the tonal footprint of the classic Neumann while bringing its sound into the new millennium. 

In a crowded marketplace the UA Bock collaboration brings both tradition and innovation into play, and if the Bock 187 is anything to go by, the entire range is well worth checking out for those chasing vintage tones with modern convenience. Best of all, the 187 won’t die on you mid-session (as my Neumann has done many a time) and doesn’t need regular servicing or exorbitant, hard-to-source part replacement. The asking price is competitive with other Neumann clones in the large diaphragm condenser format, with the quality of the build and the sonic performance of this microphone undeniably at the upper end of the scale. Add to that the advantage of a second voicing, and the Bock 187 is definitely one to investigate with its musical tone and versatility major plusses while starring in the all-important vocal role.

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.

TICKING ALL BOXES

Unpacking the large 5th Generation NT1 box is quite a journey of discovery. Inside are a number of smaller boxes containing a redesigned shockmount, pop screen, digital and analogue cables, dust cover, and finally the mic itself. Everything is beautifully packaged in white cardboard and carefully laid out, the lack of a supplied flight case perhaps the only obvious concession to the mic’s budget price point. Apart from the matte black finish (silver is also available if you so desire), the new NT1 is essentially visually unchanged from the older NT1A. The body is the same size, the signature Rode gold dot still indicates which side to sing into, the silver mesh grille even has the same patterning. The old and new mics are more or less the same weight, remarkable given the new mic houses a preamp and digital converter. The USB connection is cleverly housed alongside the three XLR pins and the overall socket housing is a standard size, making the new technology very discrete indeed.

The new shockmount has a clever adjustable pop screen holder fixed to the front of it. The supplied pop screen easily screws into the holder and can telescope upwards if desired. This is a great feature for vocal recording but I would have preferred it if this whole extra housing could be detached from the shockmount when recording other sources as it does protrude outwards a little. This minor gripe aside, the whole package is beautifully manufactured, looks great and is astonishingly good value at street price of around A$399.

MAINTAINING TRADITION

Before testing out the digital side of things, I wanted to give the NT1 5th Generation a good work out in traditional XLR mode, and I gave it a multitude of studio tasks on a variety of projects. Its first gig was on female backing vocals by the wonderful Janie Gordon, then onto strings and percussion for the upcoming Harry Hookey album. Switching from a solid-state preamp to a valve one, I followed up by distance-miking some guitar amps, then came back in closer on double bass, acoustic guitar and banjo. The mic did great work capturing and presenting the sounds on all these tasks and I never felt the need to reach for one of my much more expensive condensers. The female vocals were smooth and sweet, the double bass rich and mellow, the banjo detailed and well balanced.

Finally, I tested its layering credentials alongside an older NT1A. I had the two mics as close together as possible through two matched channels of a Universal Audio 2108 and tracked multiple acoustic guitars, drum overheads, double bass and male vocals. By grouping the two mics’ tracks separately I could easily switch between the two sounds over the whole composition, giving me a really good sense of the similarities and differences to be heard between them. Here are my thoughts:

GUTS & GLORY

Back in the ’90s I was one of those aforementioned ‘impoverished musicians’ and owned an original NT1 for quite a few years. I really liked it as an all-round studio tool and I’ve subsequently used quite a few NT1As on various projects. I’m well acquainted with the sound of these mics and it was a real pleasure to delve back into the NT1 world again.

It was quickly apparent that the new NT1 is a worthy heir to the earlier versions, and while some of the sonic signature of the old model remains, this new version presents sounds in a more sophisticated way.

Most notable to me was a subtle but discernible increase in the lower midrange and bottom end. The signature top-end sheen and clarity bump is still there (as borne out by the 3-4dB rise at around 11kHz on the frequency response graph) but it is now more evenly matched by the lower frequencies and feels more balanced and ‘true’ as a result.

Toggling between the previous-generation NT1A and the new NT1 recordings I could hear a lot of similarities in the top end but the fundamentals and midrange guts of the new mic’s sounds take a step forward and present an image with more depth and dimensionality. The differences were not day and night but they were there, and I think Rode has done an admirable job, striking the right balance between familiarity and enhancement with the voicing of this microphone. The new NT1 is a fairly sensitive microphone: -32dB re 1V/Pascal (25mV @ 94dB SPL) ±2dB @ 1kHz, but handles louder sources with no trouble at all. Overall, the revamped NT1 delivers all the versatility and ease of use of the original while noticeably upping the ante in terms of its sonics.

REVOLUTION WILL BE PODCASTED

Having had my trip down memory lane I decided it was time to investigate the future. Setting up the NT1 5th Generation for USB recording was a fairly simple process. Rode’s step-by-step guide is very helpful (in my case for the Pro Tools platform but almost all platforms are supported). It took me about five minutes to create a new aggregate device and get a 48kHz, 32-bit floating session up and running with the mic plugged directly into the back of my iMac via the long, supplied USB cable.

Sample rates up to 192k are achievable but Rode recommends 48k for laptops. The simplicity and portability of this configuration lends itself to podcasts and quick location recording tasks where a laptop would be the weapon of choice, so I wanted to hear the quality at that resolution.

At 32-bit/48k the sound quality of the built-in Revolution preamp and A/D converter is clean and musical, with my Martin guitar coming back richly detailed with all its sonic complexity intact.

The digital sound doesn’t perhaps have quite the same euphonic sheen as when using expensive external preamps, but the tonal balance and the detailed presentation are all there and the fidelity at the higher resolutions is excellent.

In what is quite a significant innovation, you can track without worrying too much (or at all, really) about gain settings. If a track recorded via USB at 32-bit floating point is playing back with clipping, a simple normalisation render will rein the overall level in and the clipping will disappear. This is due to the very high dynamic range offered by the analogue-digital converters on-board the NT1 5th Generation, so the clipping is only present at playback, not embedded in the recorded audio. If a track is recorded too quietly, simply normalise it and it will play back louder without any appreciable lifting of the noise floor. It’s like magic!

Most significantly, you can grab an NT1 and your laptop and go just about anywhere to make great sounding recordings. Goodbye external interfaces. Goodby power supply and connection issues. Goodbye fretting about gain settings, noise floors and clipping. On-the-go recordists and podcasters can henceforth concentrate on their subjects, getting their recordings down and worry about level adjustments in post later on. Expect a great deal less digital clipping from your favourite low-budget podcasters very soon!

FIRST PAST THE POST

Speaking of post production there is a wealth of other back-end value-adding that Rode is offering as part of the NT1 5th Generation package. Firstly, there’s a suite of processing tools from Aphex, a brand owned by Rode, including compressor, noise gate, two-step high pass filter, Aural Exciter and Big Bottom effects. These processing tools as well as setups for configuring and saving the mic’s gain settings and downloading firmware updates are available via Rode’s two companion software programs: Rode Central and Rode Connect. Using the latter, up to four NT1s can be connected via USB to a single computer, but up to eight can be connected using the aggregate device function on Mac, or Rode’s custom ASIO driver on Windows. Buyers can also download Rode’s Unify software, a simple high-grade platform for streaming, mixing tracks, routing and creating separate monitor mixes. 

STICKING UP FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Rode’s ethos has always included empowering the budget conscious. In more recent times it has also brought some incredibly well-made, innovative and user-friendly technology to market that challenges and enhances the way audio tasks are done. With the release of the 5th Generation NT1, Rode combines these two spheres of influence, delivering a great sounding mic that borrows from the past and steps boldly into the future. Frankly, if I had tested this microphone in just its XLR capacity, blindfolded, with no knowledge of brand or antecedence, I would have comfortably placed it at a price point somewhere around twice what Rode are asking for. The fact the new NT1 comes cleverly packaged with so many additional digital features and capabilities makes it a knock-out deal. If you’re looking for an affordable workhorse condenser that can also lighten your load when on location and keep on giving with bundled digital add-ons, the NT1 5th Generation ticks all the right boxes. Best of all it’s a great-sounding, cutting-edge piece of kit made to extremely high standards, here in Sydney, and comes with a 10-year warranty.