AoIP, AES67 and Interoperability
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INFOCOMM 2014 ISSUE
Volume 36 No. 6
www.prosoundnetwork.com
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FCC R&O Puts Squeeze
On Pro Audio RF
BY STEVE HARVEY
W
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ireless audio equipment operators and
coordinators could
face an increasingly tougher
time finding usable frequency
spectrum over the next three
years as a result of a vote by
the Federal Communications
Commission on May 15. The
Report and Order (R&O) set-
ting out the rules for the FCC’s
Broadcast Television Spectrum
Incentive Auction essentially
forces wireless microphone,
IEM and comms operators out
of the 600 MHz UHF band
and also snatches away the 12
MHz of spectrum—two TV
channels—currently set aside
for their exclusive use.
The R&O recognizes the
BY STEVE HARVEY
A
udio-over-IP
networking systems have
largely been unable
streaming over audio-over-IP
interoperability, which has
already been implemented by
Telos Alliance’s Axia division
and ALC NetworX, the organization behind RAVENNA.
“We had this 10 years
ago with VOIP with the
telephone guys and the network guys,” observed Roger Charlesworth, executive
director of the DTV Audio
Group, addressing that potential culture clash during
his organization’s annual
NAB meeting. “They both
had to realize they served the
news
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June 2014
Shure Thing
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(continued on page 20)
AoIP, AES67 and Interoperability
to play together nicely—until
now. In September 2013, the
Audio Engineering Society
published AES67, a standard for high-performance
TA ES
ND
organization—but it was a
big management problem.”
According to Felix
Krückels, business development director, Lawo, “I’m
pretty sure an audio engineer
won’t be an IT guy in the
future. It’s the same for the
IT guy; he won’t be an audio
engineer.” Offering Lawo’s
commentar y equipment
implementation at the 2014
FIFA World Cup Brazil as
an example, Krückels noted
that once the network is configured, the audio engineer’s
(continued on page 34)
Power To
The People
12
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[ 42 ]
sound REINFORCEMENT
BY CLIVE YOUNG
Avengers is now
the third highest-grossing film of
all-time; building on the 2012 movie’s tale of superheroes saving New
York City, it’s only appropriate that
Discovery Times Square, an exhibition hall only blocks from where
the film’s fictional battle took place,
would present Mar vel’s Avengers
S.T.A.T.I.O.N., an “immersive experience” that runs through January 4,
2015.
Produced by Victory Hill Exhibitions, the installation allows visitors
to enter a high-tech training center—
a maze of control rooms, laboratories
and corridors—where they can become secret agents, ogle props from
the film and learn all about the realworld science behind the comic book
characters. Whether they’re using
the interactive exhibits to map The
Hulk’s brain, discover how Thor’s
hammer conducts electricity, test
their strength against Captain America or control Iron Man’s body armor
using the pupils of their eyes, visitors
leave both excited and enlightened.
But while the displays are impressive, little thought was initially given
NEW YORK, NY—The
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Avengers Assembled
to the audio aspects. As audio
post supervisor Mark Edward
Lewis recalled, “I said, ‘Let
me get this straight—you’re
going to have Iron Man fly in
silence?’ They figured they’d
use some ambiances, but after
about an hour, I had them
realizing that there’s a lot of
considerable things that we
could do.”
As the project progressed,
Lewis brought in Frank Serafine as his senior sound
designer. “At the beginning,
our issue was to get organized
over what ended up being
224 speakers on 168 discreet
channels and more than 300
sounds that we had to devel- B)*%/':+)*($%+1'7+%$")'7"0%-'-+7$&%+)'C=+(8D'*%-'<*)/'
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sounds of the superheroes—
for instance, the buzzes and whirrs with sound effects,” said Lewis.
That said, the audio team still creof Iron Man’s armor—were the same
as heard on the big screen. For those, ated roughly two-thirds of the exSerafine had to track down pre-dub hibit’s sounds. For instance, in The
ProTools sessions of The Aveng- Avengers, the Tesseract (a fictional
ers and related superhero films. “We device that creates portals to other
were able to pull a lot from them, worlds) could be heard starting up
but when you go through a pre-dub, and shutting down—an effect cresome are 250 or more tracks deep
(continued on page 52)
Hedwig
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Broadway
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BY KELLEIGH WELCH
from its offBroadway and cult classic film counterparts, Broadway’s Hedwig and the
Angry Inch follows an East German
transgender rockstar’s struggle to
fame after her bandmate and ex-lover
steals her songs. Starring Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother
fame, the show has been nominated for eight Tony Awards, including
Best Revival of a Musical and a Best
Sound Design nomination for Tim
O’Heir.
The story follows Hedwig, who
after falling in love with a U.S. soldier, decides to have a sex change
and move with him to the United
States. However, the surgery doesn’t
heal properly for now-female Hedwig. Upon her husband leaving her
after their move to Junction City, KS,
Hedwig forms a rock band called The
briefs
McGraw/
Hill Use Ear
Trumpets
NEW YORK, NY—Revived
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Angry Inch and collaborates with her
next boyfriend, Tommy Gnosis, who
steals her songs and is soon touring
large stadiums while Hedwig and her
band continue to grace coffee shops
and cafes.
With a soundtrack reminiscent of
the 1970s glam rock era, the sound
system design needed to mimic the
setting of a rock club or concert hall,
leaving O’Heir, the show’s sound designer, with the challenge of creating a high-energy rock show in the
historic Belasco Theatre. Production
Resource Group (PRG) supplied the
majority of the equipment for the
show.
O’Heir came to sound design
from the world of record production;
besides working with Hedwig composer Stephen Trask in 1999 to record the movie version’s score, he
also tapped his experience working
in the studio with artists like The AllAmerican Rejects, The Flaming Lips
and Say Anything for the musical.
“My job is to translate a rock and
(continued on page 43)
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SSL Live Sits In
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[
June 2014
]
[ 52 ]
soundREINFORCEMENT
Avengers
(continued from page 42)
ated by recording a giant turbine.
There was no running time heard in
the film, however, so Serafine had to
create a 15-second startup, 30-second run and 15-second shutdown.
When it came time to create a visual
effect of what a NASA mapping of
the Tesseract’s energy output would
look like, Lewis suggested putting
a frequency analyzer on the turbine
sound. Before long, sound designer
Francois Blaignan was running the
sound through a ProTools rig with
iZotope’s RX3 Complete Audio Repair plug-in—and the resulting visual,
with a new skin draped over the RX3
controls, is now part of the Tesseract
exhibit.
Eschewing major networking, all
sound and video for each exhibit is
localized to that room, served off
Hewlett-Packard workstations and
Apple Mac Minis. “I doubt there’s
a Mac Mini available in any Apple
store in NYC right now,” Serafine
half-joked, though in fact, most of
the pro audio gear used was supplied by Guitar Center Pro. While
the entire 10,000-square-foot exhibition was pre-built in a Valencia, CA
warehouse and then dismantled and
shipped via nine semi-trailer trucks,
each room’s audio tracks had to be
mixed onsite in New York to be optimized to the exhibit space. With
all the equipment hidden behind
walls, each room’s audio tracks were
mixed on iPads using PreSonus AB1818VSL Remote software connected via WiFi to AudioBox 1818VSL
interfaces that were often being used
for show control as well.
At eye-level, the exhibition is flawless, but above, the rooms have open
ceilings, with the exhibition hall’s
matte black ceiling only a few feet
above the walls. “The rooms are so
reflective; we’re constantly fighting for isolation in about 50 audio
zones throughout the exhibit,” said
Serafine. Numerous live sound loudspeakers were tested and didn’t work
on multiple levels, he said: “We saw
very clearly, very quickly, that not
only was there a cost problem, but
also a dispersion pattern problem—
because they’re meant for dispersing
sound, but we don’t want it banging
around, room to room.”
Ultimately, they chose to use
PreSonus Eris E5, E8 and Sceptre
S6 studio monitors and Temblor
T10 subwoofers inside the exhibition, while JBL LSR305s cover the
gift shop and cueing area. Since the
PreSonus monitors had to be placed
just above the exhibition walls aimed
into the rooms, their front-firing
acoustic ports help keep the bass contained to specific spaces.
As a result, volume is kept to
roughly 78 dB in each room, but the
audio team wanted more impact in a
few cases. That was solved by putting
multiple 3-inch-high ButtKicker Mini
LFEs—small transducers meant to
sit under a drum throne—beneath
the floor; audio team member Carl
Yanchar mounted them in parallel
within layers of 1-inch plywood and
rubber boots, “otherwise they sound
great until you hear them plunk as
they unscrew themselves,” said Lewis.
Extremely low frequencies are EQ’d
away from the series wired transducers, as the ButtKickers can reproduce
transients, but with sustained LF energy, “they overheat and then shut off
for 10 minutes.” The payoff comes
in an exhibit where visitors watch a
life-sized Hulk (in reality, a visual
effect on an 81-square-foot touchscreen) punch the wall. “When you
put three of them under the floor and
get a transient of about 115 dB at 35
Hz, it’s intense,” said Lewis. “We ran
those punch noises and were laughing
like little kids, going ‘We’re going to
scare the crap out of people!’”
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[
June 2014
]
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