News

10 Feb 2022

Listen Here: Omicron Versus The Omnichord

by Andy Stewart

It seems pointless trying to predict how things will unfold in 2022. Maybe it’s time we all focussed solely on what we can control, rather than spending another trip around the sun frustrated by the world around us. This year has already proved far more volatile than any of us had hoped for, or anticipated.

Regardless of everything that’s been happening over the summer break, I’ve decided 2022 is the year I just put my head down and go for it. I can’t spend another day reacting to the news cycle, filled as it is with the sound bites of utterly talentless, amoral politicians talking Class-A rubbish about the various imminent threats to our very existence.

Nor can I waste another second thinking about the similarly pointless protests of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and erstwhile crackpots over the tragic loss of their ability to have a bespoke flat-white served to them at just the right temperature in their favourite Thornbury café.

Advertisement

Sorry to offend if that sounds like you, but I’ve had a (Christmas-sized) gutful.

It’s time to switch off the news, install my K-Series SSL and get to work. I’ve waited long enough.

But before I do any of that I’m taking a break.

Advertisement

As I write I’m by the seaside down in Walkerville, south of Melbourne, surfing, snorkelling, wrangling kids and riding bikes on the sand. I’ve been collecting shells on the beach rather than looking (yet again) at seven-day COVID trends, rehearsing alone with my acoustic guitar and even practising the Omnichord (not Omicron) whenever I’ve had the chance.

I’ve been enjoying the great outdoors rather than climbing the walls; hopefully tomorrow we’ll see some whiting, cow fish and weedy seadragons in amongst the shallow reefs and rock pools. We might even find a fossil or two…

This is me trying to sound positive, by the way.

I’ve avoided the C-word in my articles as much as possible for the last couple of years – and the illness itself thus far – and under instruction from CX’s illustrious editor, Jason Allen, I’ve been trying to find a good news story to tell of my experiences over the summer. And I thought I had a doozie… but alas.

Myer Music Bowled Over

No sooner have I started getting excited about playing on stage to a big crowd with my good mate Kutcha Edwards on the 26th of January at the Myer Music Bowl (this was going to be my exciting, good news story) it has just been announced that the gig is off; postponed until July (if it happens at all now), thanks to the recent Omicron outbreak. I’m gutted. All that rehearsal thrown on the scrap heap, yet again (I’ve lost count how many times that’s happened). All the planned (and purchased) accommodation is up in smoke, all the organisation around family; kaput. It’s quite beyond belief, galling and infuriating, and yet so utterly predictable.

I suspect this will be the first of many such announcements. We’re supposed to be playing at the Arts Centre in Melbourne a couple of weeks later, WOMAD in March and Port Fairy Folk Festival immediately after that. Will any of these gigs go ahead? I have no idea now, but I very much doubt it. And with the name of the recent Covid variant being so close in name to one of the instruments I’m playing at all these gigs, the aforementioned Omnichord, I may be banned from the stage regardless! “I’m playing Omnichord, you idiots; I don’t have Omicron!”

So, here we all are, once again trapped inside some dystopian nightmare, trying our best to plan the year ahead and working wherever possible while the playing field constantly shifts under our feet.

It’s hard, really hard, especially after two years of relentless stops, starts, reinventions and cancellations, to face yet another year of uncertainty. All around me friends in the industry, including half the readership of this magazine, are facing cancelled gigs, ‘delayed’ tours and broken contracts. The general sense of foreboding is growing daily.

You’d have to be Shane Warne to spin a good news story out of all the mayhem 2022 has dished up thus far. Maybe other writers have managed to retain some optimism in different pages of CX; I can’t tell from where I’m sitting right now, but I guess I’ve got to try.

So here goes nothing.

New Skills & Concepts

This is it. The year of the rebuild, the reimagining, the redoubling of effort.

I’m rebuilding my control room at The Mill, with the help of some local carpenters, along with Jason Hawkins (from Sennheiser – who’s helping with the acoustics) and Al Smart, who’s a wizard with audio design, repair and studio layout. I am privileged to have these latter two individuals offering to contribute their expertise to the project. In truth, I wouldn’t even attempt it without them.

At the centre of the room will be the aforementioned K-Series SSL; a 56-channel super analogue console, circa 2004. This will be having its power supply fully restored, and a hot-off-the-press, custom-built, redesigned computer system retrofitted to the board thanks to the friendly folks at Tangerine, in Canada. They’re installing their own proprietary version of K-automation to the console that will talk to ProTools and the SSL simultaneously, as well as save a snapshot of the board, a la the original Total Recall system. All this information is apparently saved to the brand spanking custom Tangerine computer, which entirely replaces the old bespoke SSL clunker. This will effectively make the K-Series behave more like an SSL Duality in some respects. The best of both worlds you might say.

Personally, I can’t wait for this to happen. At that point, not only will I have a supreme analogue SSL console at my fingertips, I’ll also have a ProTools automation system, which, let’s face it, is far more sophisticated than any analogue console ever was, that interacts dynamically with the console itself, rather than having the console sit passively, oblivious to any digital automation that might be occurring inside the computer. This has always been a crude marriage of convenience in the past, mainly because either the dynamic thresholds of all the analogue compressors and gates would go out the window the moment your computer-based automation was ridden up or down, or you had two automation systems running side by side that didn’t communicate with one another at all. With the Tangerine system, all the ProTools automation is reflected on the console’s moving faders.

Surrounding the console will be a new PC running the latest ProTools software (which I’ll be writing about in detail next issue), a collection of old and new outboard gear, most of which I’ve owned for at least a couple of decades, some two-track tape machines and a crazy collection of instruments. I’ll be adding a couple of choice analogue pieces to the setup too: a couple of 1176s, a PYE mono compressor and a Bricasti M7 reverb unit (the sound of which is truly breathtaking) to sit alongside my other main reverbs: a 480L and an AKG BX20.

Wrapping its arms around all this equipment will be a newly designed control room, that will be oriented 90 degrees to the original layout. This will be ‘factoring in’ Dolby Atmos acoustics, although it’s not entirely clear yet whether I’ll be diving into that world in 2022, or not. The Atmos format has certainly started making serious inroads into the consumer music market, but like everything else, Covid hasn’t done it any favours, it seems. Right now, I’m hesitant to commit 100% to the format, but I probably need to clarify my position on all that quick smart.

But should the whole world start to fall apart again, which, I sincerely hope it doesn’t, I’m going to dive into some new music projects with a couple of locals I know who live within a 10-kilometre radius of the studio, and continue to mix remotely as I’ve mostly done for the last couple of years.

As an industry, all we can do to survive, and indeed flourish, in 2022 is our very best to innovate and expand our horizons in ways that may not feel entirely comfortable to us at first.

I’m sure if we all work hard to push ourselves (yet again) we may come out the other side of all this mayhem stronger, and embedded into a far larger, more diverse market than we contributed to in decades previous. The most obvious aspect of this is our capacity to reach into the homes of people both here and overseas, rather than assuming they’ll be coming to us.

I suspect the main form of transport most people will be using for some time yet will be virtual… followed soon after by electric cars.

2022: the year we innovate our way out of this mess.

Andy Stewart owns and operates The Mill studio in Victoria, a world-class production, mixing and mastering facility. He’s happy to respond to any pleas for pro audio help… contact him at: andy@themill.net.au or visit: www.themillstudio.com.au

Subscribe

Published monthly since 1991, our famous AV industry magazine is free for download or pay for print. Subscribers also receive CX News, our free weekly email with the latest industry news and jobs.