NO BRAINER

IRX One is such a lightweight/portable, no-brainer PA that I must admit, my expectations of the audio performance weren’t sky high. But as soon as I connected my phone via Bluetooth 5 I was greeted by a pleasing rendition. First things I noticed: ‘wow, hasn’t Bluetooth audio quality come a long way in the last 10 years!’; ‘the sound is quite relaxed and open – nothing is poking me in the eye’; and, ‘gosh, the sound is very even back to front and side to side’.

I had the EQ preset set to Flat and was running the system at about 50%.

I was also grateful the Bluetooth connection provides an additional input and doesn’t take up one of the three channels. Admittedly, that means you need to control the mix balance from your device but that’s no biggie.

Turning the PA up, I was pleased to hear that the sound held up right to the point of limiting. The eight-inch sub isn’t designed to fill a large space and the electronics ensure it doesn’t go flappy in places that it shouldn’t.

AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’

Next, Preshan and I plugged in a microphone, acoustic guitar and a keyboard. It’s almost impossible to get this PA to misbehave. With the AFS button activated you can sing with your mic and face hard up against the grille of the column. Admittedly, at this point you’re hearing the DSP working but it’s not feeding back. There’s sufficient gain and control to quickly achieve a nice balance of multiple inputs. We both felt that with the keys and the vocals, IRX One provided space and separation without worrying about using the onboard fixed band EQ, which isn’t intended for finessing or sculpting your sound. I did wonder if there was some hush-hush automatic gain control/compression going on to add another level of failsafe level control. 

The EQ presets are a nifty feature. I couldn’t find any reference in the manual to the EQ contours it’s imposing. In fact, I still don’t even know what ‘KTV’ on the dial stands for. No matter, they’re really a ‘suck it ’n’ see’, ‘if it makes it sound better to your ears then use it’ feature. 

The lack of any reverb in the mixer is the only thing that IRX me (sorry). For performers, this is fairly easily remedied by an in-line reverb pedal. I’m aware that JBL has done its best to ensure the mixer can be operated by anyone, and the lack of ’verb is a design choice, and probably the right one. But a one-knob Lexicon Hall would really be the icing.

PERFECT MIX?

IRX One is a remarkable PA. To say it’s ‘versatile’ is a huge understatement. In fact, I can’t think of an institution (or even household) that wouldn’t benefit from having an IRX One handy. Quite literally, anyone, can haul it out and make some noise or plug a microphone into it and, quite literally, no one, can stuff it up – it’s as foolproof as any all-in-one PA ever could be. (I guess the only ‘training’ you might need to do, is to have that awkward conversation about the difference between gain and level.)

What’s more, it sounds good. The design of the 6 x two-inch column array is highly effective and it’s easy to get a ‘produced’ sound with little effort. The 160° horizontal dispersion is very even and means non-technical operatives hardly even need to point the PA in the correct direction — everyone’s covered. That’s not to say the IRX One can break the laws of physics and produce audio miracles but for small to mediums sized spaces (or even larger spaces where only speech reproduction is required) this PA won’t disappoint.

THE ROOM

We were recording Gretta’s vocals in my production suite. It’s a space that Gretta is familiar with and comfortable in. It was originally designed as a drum room, so there’s acoustic treatment in there but not to the degree that you’d treat a vocal booth.

We moved the microphone around and tried different spots to find a position that didn’t accentuate the bad stuff. Once we determined where that was, we taped an ‘X’ on the floor and didn’t move from that position. Just like most people recording from home, you could hear a little bit of flutter and a little bit of background noise. In our case, we also had people walking past the studio door occasionally.

THE GEAR

For consistency’s sake we wanted to settle on one microphone for all the vocal recordings. We didn’t have a bunch of expensive mics to choose from. We settled on a Chandler TG mic. It’s certainly not a budget mic but it’s not out-of-reach either. Gretta has an amazing voice and really good control. But the biggest challenge we found was the 2 to 5kHz range, which can be harsh. We were trying to find a mic that gave a tape-like roll-off in that frequency area.

We didn’t have racks of preamps to choose from. We recorded the vocals through a pretty standard UA Apollo chain — nothing out of the ordinary. We didn’t track any plug-ins on the way in. We thought about recording with some gentle compression but I think we decided recording raw would give us more options later.

THE PSYCHOLOGY

As a vocal producer it’s your job to coax the very best performance from the artist, and a large part of that is knowing when to push and when to back off. It’s the interpersonal stuff.

These days studio engineers are expected to fix performances after the fact. Artists tend to have short attention spans now. They expect things to happen quickly and, often, budgets are tight and time is short. Your job is to make the artist feel comfortable and make sure they can perform at their best.

Gretta needed a safe space to be emotionally vulnerable, but she’s also very hard on herself and needed support at points (even when she delivers a near-perfect performance!).

MIX ON THE RUN

Gretta is definitely someone who needs to hear a high-quality rough mix as she goes. I would create a good-sounding mix with some effects, processing, and some panning of backing vocals, so Gretta could get involved with the song as we listen back during the recording process. None of what I was doing would be used in the final mix, it was just for the purposes of listening. That’s another piece of advice I’d offer: artists these days won’t understand why they’re not hearing something ‘produced’ during the recording process, in fact, if they don’t, it could badly demoralise them.

MELODYNE FORENSICS

After about a day of recording vocals for a song I would spend about a day, or a day and a half, on Melodyning and editing everything. For this album, Gretta was after a processed pop sound. So everything is very, very closely tuned and edited. Most of the harmonies have at least four stacks – maybe a couple of BVs in the left and right, with the lead in the middle. There’s an amazing level of detail, so I’m doing my best to be just as detailed with breath editing and de-clicking – making sure the fades were all exactly right. I’ll also be forensic with the time editing, making sure all of the BVs and the lead move really closely together. If every BV double was slightly out of time relative to each other then we wouldn’t achieve that super-tight pop sound.  You can read more about the pitch and timing edit process later in the article.

VOCAL CHAIN

The S’s on Gretta’s vocal were the biggest challenge. We were making quite a bright-sounding record and a very loud pop record, so we would manually de-ess in addition to using de-esser plugins.

As far as plugins go, at the start of the chain was a more forensic EQ (like a FabFilter Pro-Q3) then a couple of stages of gentle compression – we generally used a UA LA2A and a 1176. Gretta’s vocal doesn’t respond to one-stage of more severe compression, so we’re better off having a couple of stages.

I’m a big fan of the UA Pultec EQ-P1A, for a gentle presence boost or to cut some low/mid. It’s the sort of EQ plugin that forces you to use your ears and not your eyes, which I like.

At all times I’m aiming to finish with a vocal quality that sounds as close to the other songs as possible.

Consistency is everything for this album. The goal was not to have a really organic vocal performance, but a consistent vocal that would consistently would cut through at all times.

Finally, we  would often use the McDSP ML4 compressor/limiter over the vocal group. When you hear a low/mid build up or the highs build up, the ML4 lets you control that sort of thing very effectively. It’s a really useful tool at the end of vocal chain tool to just control stuff when you have a lot of vocal elements coming together.

For backing vocals, the other producer on the album, Gab Strum, is a big fan of the Eventide H3000. He’s got a hardware unit and loves it. I tend to use the SoundToys Microshift plugin or the plugin version of the H3000. Those widener plugins are great on BV stacks to make them more expansive in the mix. For the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahhs’ those type of plugins are unstoppable. I’m a fan of EchoBoy for delays as well.

MELODYNE MAESTRO

Here’s a final thought: you don’t need crazy-expensive tools to do a good job! Close editing and a basic copy of Melodyne Essential (A$129) will get you 90 percent of the results the pro engineers are achieving. The other tools I’ve mentioned make life just a little bit easier but you’ll get a similar result with your DAW’s bundled plugins.

Remember: great-sounding vocals aren’t something you can rush. You need to take your time to make the artist feel comfortable; take your time listening and doing the best job that you can! More often than not, the vocals are the focus, it’s where the humanity and emotion of the song will mostly come through. A good lead vocal comp will show the artist in the best light and make them feel great, and this just takes time and care. Once you’ve got a great lead vocal, making sure the BVs support the lead and help tell that story is the goal. Time, care and Melodyne will get you there!

BUY DESIGN

The extended bass is the A152 headline but there’s a whole lot more going for them.

They’re a closed back headphone that fits very comfortably. The design is minimal and stealthy. The ear cup rotates if you have reason to do any DJ-style monitoring. The 1.5m cord (96 strands of braided oxygen-free cable) plugs into the base of the right-hand cup (3.5mm) and there are options for a more expensive lead (200- and 400-strand) if you have audiophile tendencies. There’s nothing distinctive about the design perhaps beyond the Audix logo on the side (I didn’t realise Audix had a logo until I saw it).

The 50mm dynamic drivers do the work. There’s a quoted sensitivity of 103dB and a frequency range of 8Hz–28kHz (I assume that’s -10dB but isn’t written anywhere). The impedance is 30Ω, so the A152s are happy being plugged into just about any source. In fact, they’re comparatively loud when put up against my Sennheiser HD25s (60Ω), Audio-Techica M50s (38Ω) or even the Rode NTH-100s (32Ω).

‘A’ GAME

The A152s are an enjoyable headphone. The sound stage is particularly expansive for a closed-back design. There’s plenty of detail and, as I mentioned earlier, you won’t be left wanting for level.

The bass-heavy bias is a matter of taste. Audix has other models in the A Series, so if you’re picking up what Audix is putting down, then it’d be worth test-driving the A150, for example, which has a more balanced frequency response.

If, like me, you have the luxury of a variety of headphones in your arsenal, then the A152s provide a useful LF spotlight as well as being a vibey option for recreational listening.

If you’re reading between the lines here, then you’ll be hearing that I’m not recommending the A152s as your only or main monitoring solution.

TURBO BOOST

The Audix A152 headphones are a high-quality, mid-priced monitoring option. Don’t need the extra low frequency turbo boost? Then have a look at the A140, A142 or A150s in the range. Audix is hardly ‘the little guy’ but its definitely little-r than the dominant players in the market and if you’re anything like me, that’s attractive. Well worth your consideration.

JBL BRX SPEC

The bandroom PA comprises 3 x JBL BRX308 full-range elements a side and a BRX325 sub each side. A couple of JBL PRX908 full-range cabs provide some outfill and JBL EON cabs, showing their versatility, act as stage/drum monitors as well as a B Stage PA. A dbx PA2 provides system drive.

It’s a solid PA that’s attracting positive feedback from musicians and audio engineers. “It’s an all-JBL PA rather than a mongrel collection of gear I had before and that definitely reassures audio people,” comments Ali.

The roster comprises a broad and vibrant cross section of artists, and being a 350-cap room, they’re mostly artists at a point in their careers where they’re on their way up or on their way down. But all the musicians are experienced enough to appreciate the investment in good audio. Sure, who knows what’s around the corner — hopefully not another live music-killing pandemic — but at least the complaints from neighbours have calmed down. Thankfully one thing has got just that little bit easier.