- Robert Marshall, Source Elements and Someone Audio Post, Chicago
- Darren "Robbo" Robertson, Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney
- George "The Tech" Whittam, LA
- Andrew Peters, Voiceover Talent and Home Studio Guy
- Craig Field, National Archives of Australia and co-developer of the Sony microphone
- Tribooth: The best vocal booth for home or on-the-road voice recording. Use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off.
- Austrian Audio: Making passion heard.
- The Story Behind the Sony Microphone:
- Craig's journey from owning Elkwood Studio in Sydney to collaborating with Sony.
- The development process and challenges of creating a high-resolution microphone.
- High-Resolution Audio:
- The significance of high-resolution audio in different parts of the world, particularly in Japan and Europe.
- How high-resolution audio formats like DSD and PCM are utilized and appreciated.
- Technical Innovations:
- The importance of having high-quality microphones to complement advanced A/D converters, digital preamps, and cable technology.
- Details about the Sony C-100 microphone and its unique capabilities, including its ability to capture frequencies up to 50kHz.
- Real-World Applications:
- Recording a unique performance on the world's largest piano built by Wayne Stewart, using the Sony microphones.
- How high-frequency recording is beneficial for sound effects and Foley work.
- Microphone Technology:
- The significance of anti-vibrational technology in microphones to minimize reverberance within the capsule.
- Comparisons with other high-end microphones and the innovative features of the Sony microphones.
00:00:00
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
00:00:01
Let's get started.
00:00:01
Welcome Hi Hi Hi Hello everyone!
00:00:05
to the Pro Audio Suite.
00:00:06
These guys are professional, they're motivated.
00:00:08
Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for
00:00:11
home or on the road voice recording, and
00:00:13
Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
00:00:16
Introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone
00:00:20
Audio Post, Chicago.
00:00:21
Darren Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging, Sydney.
00:00:25
Tech to the VO Stars.
00:00:26
George the Tech Whittam from LA.
00:00:28
And me, Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home
00:00:31
studio guy.
00:00:32
Line up, man!
00:00:33
Here we go!
00:00:35
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks
00:00:38
to Tribooth.
00:00:39
Don't forget the code TRIPAP200.
00:00:42
That will get you $200 off your Tribooth
00:00:45
and Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
00:00:48
We have a guest today, Craig Field, who
00:00:51
works for the National Archives of Australia, but
00:00:54
also was a guy who co-developed with
00:00:56
Sony a microphone.
00:00:59
Intriguing.
00:01:00
Now, Robbo, you've been chatting with Craig.
00:01:02
What's the story?
00:01:02
Well, Craig, you might as well tell the
00:01:04
story.
00:01:05
You used to own a studio here in
00:01:07
Sydney called Elkwood before you moved on to
00:01:11
the archives, but you got involved with Sony
00:01:13
somehow along the way.
00:01:14
Tell the story.
00:01:16
Look, it's a great story.
00:01:17
Sony were very interested in developing a new
00:01:22
series of microphones.
00:01:25
High resolution audio, particularly in Australia, is not
00:01:28
really a big thing.
00:01:29
But in Japan, it's quite a thing.
00:01:31
People listen to DSD files and high res
00:01:34
PCM files.
00:01:36
And throughout Europe, it's always been quite a
00:01:38
substantial part of the market over there, actually.
00:01:42
And a lot of the larger classical labels
00:01:45
have kept it going since pre-CD days.
00:01:49
So those formats, although they're not very popular
00:01:51
in America or in Australia, they're really quite
00:01:56
substantial.
00:01:57
So Sony still make high resolution players, like
00:02:00
little Walkman players that they sell lots of.
00:02:05
And they sound quite amazing.
00:02:09
And I guess the main thing that they
00:02:11
really discovered was the main thing missing from
00:02:14
the whole high resolution market was the microphones.
00:02:18
Because the A to D converters were there,
00:02:20
the digital preamps were there, the cable technology
00:02:24
and the ability to record in multiple stereo
00:02:28
fields was available.
00:02:30
But they didn't sort of have the technology
00:02:32
for the microphones.
00:02:33
And you guys would probably know the reasons
00:02:36
like Neumann's original reasons to do with phase
00:02:40
problems above 20k and the development as they
00:02:46
develop their microphones.
00:02:47
That's why those things were kept at that
00:02:49
point in that period of time when microphone
00:02:52
development happened.
00:02:54
And so to cut a very long story
00:02:57
short, I was pretty much just working in
00:02:59
my smaller studio in the Blue Mountains in
00:03:02
beautiful Australia, where I had a Steinway Model
00:03:05
D concert piano at that time, although I
00:03:08
think I may have moved on to the
00:03:09
Yamaha.
00:03:11
And I was very focused on doing specialist
00:03:15
high resolution recordings.
00:03:17
And obviously that found its way to Sony
00:03:20
and they heard about me.
00:03:22
And they sent a man called David Green,
00:03:25
who was the product development manager for these
00:03:29
microphones.
00:03:30
And he went to a number of different
00:03:31
studios in Australia, including some of the really
00:03:34
big ones that I won't mention.
00:03:36
And they sort of laughed at him saying,
00:03:38
what do you need a microphone that goes
00:03:40
up to 50k for?
00:03:41
And how ludicrous is that?
00:03:43
And anyway, he ended up, if I recall
00:03:47
correctly, he actually just caught the train up
00:03:49
to the Blue Mountains and knocked on my
00:03:50
door.
00:03:51
And as you guys would know, rarely do
00:04:00
you get someone at your studio, just knock
00:04:02
on the door with a bag of microphones
00:04:04
saying, hey, hello, here I am from Sony.
00:04:08
So that started and I was sent the
00:04:12
first beta models.
00:04:15
There are a few little problems with those
00:04:18
models.
00:04:18
I did a lot of recordings and a
00:04:20
lot of analysis, which I sent through to
00:04:22
the Sydney office and then went to Japan.
00:04:25
And we worked together on ironing out a
00:04:29
lot of the different issues that occurred in
00:04:32
that development.
00:04:33
And then we moved on from that to
00:04:37
a performance, which I'll share a video link
00:04:39
for, which is on the Sony website, which
00:04:42
was in Australia, there's a piano manufacturer called
00:04:47
Wayne Stewart.
00:04:49
And he's world renowned.
00:04:51
He makes pretty much the finest pianos in
00:04:54
the world.
00:04:55
Steinway will send someone out to take me
00:04:58
down for saying that.
00:05:00
But Wayne has made some pretty big advancements
00:05:04
in the development of the piano.
00:05:06
And one of the pianos that he designed
00:05:09
is called the Ballura and it's the largest
00:05:11
piano in the world.
00:05:12
It's got an additional two octaves on it.
00:05:15
And it also is three meters in length.
00:05:19
Three meters!
00:05:19
Have you seen the one that the guy
00:05:20
builds from Latvia or something?
00:05:23
He builds it against a wall.
00:05:24
It's got to be like, I mean, the
00:05:26
low string is a couple of stories tall.
00:05:29
It's insane.
00:05:30
The Stewart's piano, it's not a kind of
00:05:33
an experimental art piece.
00:05:35
It's an actual product.
00:05:37
Yeah, it's an incredible thing.
00:05:40
And he built it using 1800-year-old
00:05:46
Tasmanian sassafras wood that he pulled out of
00:05:49
a river in Tasmania.
00:05:52
And it's spectacular.
00:05:53
And it's down in Ballura.
00:05:54
So the whole event, I put together this
00:05:57
big production because I'm a bit of a
00:06:00
Bach nut and Bach had made a few
00:06:05
adventures.
00:06:05
We're talking Timber and you're talking Bach.
00:06:07
Hey P, I could see where you were
00:06:09
going.
00:06:13
There was no Bach on the piano though,
00:06:15
right?
00:06:16
No, but Bach had made a few organs
00:06:21
in his time and he was very much
00:06:23
a man ahead of his time.
00:06:24
And he had written on a couple of
00:06:26
different pieces, suggested ideas, should anyone be able
00:06:31
to extend the range of the piano or
00:06:34
the organ in that time.
00:06:37
And so I knew about that particular piece
00:06:39
and I work with a lot of concert
00:06:41
pianists.
00:06:41
So we went down to Ballura to the
00:06:43
inauguration of this giant piano.
00:06:46
And with Sony, we recorded with their new
00:06:50
microphones, the first recording of this extended piece
00:06:54
of Bach music on the largest piano in
00:06:56
the world.
00:06:57
So the whole thing took a few years,
00:06:59
obviously, and there's a great documentary on the
00:07:01
Sony website.
00:07:04
It was one of their most popular videos
00:07:07
that they did for a thing they called
00:07:10
Sony Stories.
00:07:11
So we documented the whole thing over a
00:07:13
period of years.
00:07:14
And yeah, it was a very exciting thing
00:07:16
to do as an engineer.
00:07:18
So what's the model of the Sony, that
00:07:21
microphone?
00:07:22
Did you say it was C-100?
00:07:23
Yeah, this is a C-100.
00:07:25
And they also brought out a range of
00:07:27
pencil microphones that just use the smaller capsule,
00:07:31
but they're still linear from sort of 20
00:07:34
to 50k.
00:07:34
Who is listening up to 50k?
00:07:37
It's not so much the listening, it's a
00:07:40
culmination of different perspectives.
00:07:42
Firstly, obviously, it's pretty easy to record at
00:07:47
192 these days or at 96k.
00:07:51
And therefore, you can remove some of the
00:07:54
Nyquist filtering that's happening in all of our
00:07:57
digital recordings.
00:07:59
And by extending that Nyquist filter, that filter
00:08:02
changes quite drastically as you change it.
00:08:05
So for me, working at 32 bit 384
00:08:08
PCM or in DXD, there is no Nyquist
00:08:11
filtering.
00:08:12
So there's no truncation at any level across
00:08:18
any of the frequencies.
00:08:19
You just let it alias way up there
00:08:21
in the Netherlands of...
00:08:23
Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:27
Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:28
But the other use for these high frequencies
00:08:29
is you can do Foley and you can
00:08:31
record ice breaking and then slow it down
00:08:34
and still have meaningful information that drops down
00:08:36
into the recording, which is just amazing for
00:08:39
sound effects, for example.
00:08:40
Sure, I see that.
00:08:41
That's one of the reasons why people have
00:08:43
recorded at 192, for example, was the Foley
00:08:45
market.
00:08:46
But in the high resolution market of recording
00:08:49
at DSD, for example, the fact that the
00:08:54
first DSD recordings and for many, many years,
00:08:57
you can't edit a DSD file because it's
00:08:59
a one bit file or it used to
00:09:01
be.
00:09:02
And so you can't cut a bit.
00:09:04
And so for the audio file market and
00:09:07
the audio purists and for a lot of
00:09:09
the musicians as well, the idea that no
00:09:12
one could tamper with that recording, no one
00:09:15
can edit that moment in time and that
00:09:17
it was captured in full range and full
00:09:20
frequency without any intervention has been a really
00:09:24
interesting part of the audio world that never
00:09:28
really made it to America or Australia or
00:09:31
England for that, who developed recording techniques and
00:09:34
developed post-production techniques.
00:09:36
So the Europeans went sort of the other
00:09:38
way and said, how about we get engineers
00:09:41
out of the way?
00:09:42
How about we just record and make sure
00:09:45
no one can ever tamper with that?
00:09:48
So that's a very...
00:09:50
What was the distribution method for that?
00:09:51
It was discs, like Sony had the dual
00:09:54
discs that were CD and DSD smashed together
00:09:58
in one.
00:09:59
SACD, yeah, SACD, gotcha.
00:10:01
And also I have a record label with
00:10:04
native DSD and had a label in partnership
00:10:08
with Sony during that time to release some
00:10:11
of those files.
00:10:11
That Bach recording is available on native DSD.
00:10:16
Was it Pyramix?
00:10:17
It was the only ones that did a
00:10:19
DSD editor, I believe, right?
00:10:21
Did anybody else do DSD editing?
00:10:24
There were a few different people like Sequoia
00:10:26
used to be able to do DSD when
00:10:28
it first came out and things like that.
00:10:30
So there were a few, but most of
00:10:32
them have fallen away and dropped it as
00:10:34
a format.
00:10:35
And Pyramix still offers DSD, but there is
00:10:37
no real native one-bit recording now because
00:10:41
the chips are advanced enough to be able
00:10:44
to offer four bits or five bits without
00:10:47
any major errors.
00:10:49
So there's not really that pure one-bit
00:10:52
recording that used to be.
00:10:55
So there are some editing options in Pyramix.
00:10:59
You can do some editings in DSD and
00:11:01
that makes the file a PCM file for
00:11:04
that edit and then joins it back together.
00:11:08
Just to bring you guys up to speed,
00:11:10
the way one-bit recording works is it's
00:11:11
always looking at the next bit and it
00:11:13
just says, is the next bit above or
00:11:15
below where I was before?
00:11:17
It's almost like a delta-sigma converter taken
00:11:21
to the extreme.
00:11:22
And so it's just floating there.
00:11:25
Am I higher or lower than I was
00:11:26
before in the sample rate?
00:11:28
What's the sample rate of DSD?
00:11:29
Like 2.8 megahertz or something?
00:11:31
Yeah, 2.8 megahertz.
00:11:32
It's so up there that the rise time
00:11:35
is instantaneous practically anyway.
00:11:38
So higher, higher, higher, higher.
00:11:40
It just, you get practically a straight wall
00:11:42
going up.
00:11:43
Wow.
00:11:44
You also get a digitized pure sine wave.
00:11:48
And the way that they first developed it
00:11:50
was to sort of trick the computer into
00:11:52
thinking it was actually thinking it was recording
00:11:56
a time code, but it wasn't.
00:11:59
It was recording a pure sine wave because
00:12:01
you've got a positive and a negative and
00:12:03
that's all you got.
00:12:04
You got one bit.
00:12:04
You either got a one or a zero.
00:12:06
So ultimately, you're as close to pure analog
00:12:10
as you can possibly get.
00:12:12
So it's a wonderful format.
00:12:14
And it sounds great, guys.
00:12:15
If you've never tried it, go and buy
00:12:18
an old...
00:12:18
Overkill for voiceover probably.
00:12:20
But yeah.
00:12:21
The only ones I remember were GenX made.
00:12:23
I did do a recording and it was
00:12:25
a GenX that had some DSD recorders, I
00:12:29
believe.
00:12:29
Those big boxes that they used to have.
00:12:32
Yeah.
00:12:32
They did a big hardware recorder.
00:12:35
And Tascam made a DSD hardware recorder that's
00:12:38
still out there called a DA3000.
00:12:40
And that's how I started in DSD.
00:12:43
Just as a proof of purchase, I wanted
00:12:45
to hear if it actually had any significance.
00:12:47
And it sounded unbelievable.
00:12:51
And I had great equipment and was recording
00:12:53
at 96 and all of this sort of
00:12:55
stuff and doing a lot.
00:12:58
And this is going back 12 years and
00:13:00
14 years.
00:13:02
And I think it's even 16 years now.
00:13:06
But really, it sounded remarkably good.
00:13:09
Yeah, right.
00:13:09
Going back to the mic.
00:13:11
The C100, looking at US prices, is $1
00:13:14
.
00:13:15
Okay.
00:13:15
And this is a microphone that, from what
00:13:17
I'm understanding, is like, what would you call
00:13:20
theoretically perfect?
00:13:22
Isn't it $800?
00:13:24
Or was I looking at something wrong over
00:13:25
here?
00:13:25
That was a used price, I found.
00:13:27
No, I thought it was that one for...
00:13:28
It's a mic that's like theoretically perfect.
00:13:31
Is that a kind of a way to
00:13:32
describe it to an idiot?
00:13:33
No, no.
00:13:34
I don't think there is such a microphone.
00:13:36
I think what it offers is something...
00:13:38
I mean, is this close?
00:13:39
No, no.
00:13:41
You wouldn't want to stick this inside a
00:13:43
kick drum.
00:13:45
No, I don't mean perfect for anything.
00:13:47
But I mean accurately accurate from 5 hertz
00:13:50
to 50k.
00:13:51
Like from the way the DPA would say,
00:13:53
here's your measurement microphone.
00:13:56
And it's just like flat from here to
00:13:58
infinity.
00:13:59
Whatever flat is.
00:14:00
I'm just trying to conceptualize, understand this mic.
00:14:02
Because we're supported by and we use Austrian
00:14:06
Audio and they have one called the 818.
00:14:09
It's a twin capsule mic where there's two
00:14:11
capsules out of phase.
00:14:12
You know, it's front and rear, blah, blah,
00:14:14
blah.
00:14:14
Yeah, but that's a standard sort of cardioid
00:14:17
thing.
00:14:18
Yeah, same exact price, right?
00:14:20
So I'm looking at this mic and going,
00:14:21
in a world of microphones that range from
00:14:24
$80 to $8 to, you know, whatever.
00:14:28
The $1 price point for what the
00:14:30
performance of this microphone is, it seems like
00:14:34
it has no peer.
00:14:35
I mean, am I right?
00:14:36
Uh, well, there are sunken microphones.
00:14:40
There's a couple of others.
00:14:41
But yeah, it's a really, really good microphone.
00:14:46
One of the things that Sony developed with
00:14:48
their Valve microphone, and they recognized this through
00:14:52
older microphone development, was they built an anti
00:14:56
-vibrational technology within the microphones.
00:14:59
And that means that the reverberance in the
00:15:04
capsule is very minimized.
00:15:06
And that sort of reverberant sound that does
00:15:08
happen in large format capsules.
00:15:11
And it may be one of the reasons
00:15:12
why Austrian Audio have gone with the shape
00:15:15
of their microphone as well.
00:15:17
You know, you've got a large drum, you
00:15:22
know, and if you're putting it near, you
00:15:24
know, noisy sound sources, there's sound and reverberance
00:15:28
within that.
00:15:29
And it has caused problems.
00:15:31
They found that in the initial development of
00:15:33
their big Valve microphone, and they developed a
00:15:37
really, really substantial means of sort of decoupling
00:15:43
and isolating any reverberant sound within the capsule.
00:15:49
And so the Sony to really function well
00:15:53
in recording those high resolution sounds, they had
00:15:57
to sort of invest and really redeveloped that
00:16:02
decoupling and that soundproofing within the microphone.
00:16:06
So it's a great, it's a really, really
00:16:09
wonderful mic.
00:16:10
And the pencil microphones are just, you know,
00:16:15
amazing.
00:16:16
Like second to none, they're really, really good.
00:16:17
So, yeah.
00:16:18
Sounds like in terms of decoupling, like there's
00:16:20
only one mic stand company I've seen try
00:16:22
to like maximize that whole design.
00:16:24
That was the Enhanced Audio Stands.
00:16:26
You ever heard of them out of Ireland?
00:16:28
Look, I use these guys, try at all.
00:16:30
But have you ever seen these?
00:16:32
Yeah, that's great.
00:16:34
Yeah, I love those.
00:16:35
What's the model of the Sony pencil mic?
00:16:38
I think it's ECM 100 or ECU 100.
00:16:43
They do a cardioid and an omni.
00:16:45
Yeah, ECM.
00:16:46
Because God, I remember back in the day,
00:16:48
I had a pair of ECM 33Ps.
00:16:50
There's, what's that?
00:16:52
ECM 100U, is that the same?
00:16:55
Yeah.
00:16:55
Is that it?
00:16:55
That's unidirectional.
00:16:57
So that'd be the, yep.
00:16:58
And then there's an ECM N, non-directional.
00:17:02
Omni.
00:17:03
They're tiny.
00:17:05
So if I'm looking at the 100, to
00:17:09
me, I'm having trouble with scale.
00:17:11
But the 100, that smaller diaphragm up there
00:17:14
still looks pretty, it's a big, small diaphragm.
00:17:18
It's not like, certainly not anything like Earthworks
00:17:20
is trying to put out.
00:17:21
But that's the same diaphragm that's on those
00:17:23
ECM 100s?
00:17:26
Yeah, it is.
00:17:27
And look, Earthworks is slightly different because they're
00:17:31
trying to elongate the capsule and get the
00:17:35
distance between the diaphragm and the preamp within
00:17:39
the microphone.
00:17:39
And that's a different concept altogether.
00:17:42
You know, the extended diaphragm, like a number
00:17:46
of different microphone manufacturers have gone with that
00:17:49
idea of, you know, and B&K, I
00:17:52
think, went that way as well.
00:17:53
They wanted that extended microphone, like the diaphragm
00:17:57
removed from the preamplifier.
00:18:00
There's a whole lot of reasons why they
00:18:01
do that sort of thing.
00:18:02
Yeah, I mean, they do that for stage
00:18:04
reasons so they can put the nice little
00:18:06
gooseneck on it too.
00:18:07
But I think also Earthworks' idea is that,
00:18:11
and they take it more to the nines
00:18:13
than even maybe B&K do, but as
00:18:15
the diaphragm gets smaller, its weight is smaller,
00:18:20
it becomes more accurate, but then the problem
00:18:22
is it becomes noisy because it's so small
00:18:25
because you're trying to amplify like nothing, essentially.
00:18:29
Yeah, that's good there.
00:18:30
I will send you a link, Robbo, so
00:18:33
that people can watch the doco that Sony
00:18:35
did on the world premiere recording of this
00:18:38
giant piano, and we used the mics.
00:18:41
I obviously hadn't necessarily recorded with the microphones
00:18:45
in a different environment, and I'd never recorded
00:18:48
a piano with that much sound and volume
00:18:51
and sound range.
00:18:54
And my goodness, it was so stressful, guys.
00:18:57
As engineers, can you imagine having six Sony
00:19:01
executives fly over with translators and stand behind
00:19:04
you while you're setting up and doing your
00:19:06
first recording?
00:19:06
I'm interested what type of...
00:19:08
Like, it must have been in a concert
00:19:09
hall or something to have a three-meter
00:19:11
piano, surely.
00:19:12
Well, I think it's actually...
00:19:14
I'll send you the doco and then maybe
00:19:16
we can have another podcast about it because
00:19:18
you've got to see where it is.
00:19:20
It's in a private...
00:19:21
It was in a reclusive billionaire's house who
00:19:25
became a composer in his 40s and tucked
00:19:29
himself away and was barely seen for the
00:19:31
rest of his life and built this enormous
00:19:33
pavilion and has sort of left his fortune
00:19:37
to fund the arts.
00:19:39
And yeah, the Ballora piano is down there
00:19:42
in his pavilion, and it's amazing.
00:19:44
It's not the piano that's actually shown in
00:19:46
the Sony website, sony.net, for the microphone,
00:19:51
is it?
00:19:51
That is, yeah.
00:19:52
Okay, I'm looking at it now.
00:19:54
Do you know someone named Hudson Fair?
00:19:56
I know Hudson Fair.
00:19:57
Only through social media.
00:19:59
We've chatted a fair bit.
00:20:00
We use a lot of the same stuff.
00:20:01
He's a fair sort of a guy, actually.
00:20:03
No, he's the local in Chicago.
00:20:05
I shouldn't say local.
00:20:06
He's international, but I've worked for him and
00:20:09
done a lot of recording.
00:20:11
When he needs somebody, he can just go
00:20:15
into microphones to no end as well.
00:20:17
He's got quite the collection.
00:20:19
He has used the Sonys.
00:20:21
He likes them.
00:20:22
I'm just thinking Robert and Craig locked in
00:20:24
a room for a weekend.
00:20:26
Wait, yeah.
00:20:28
We should record that.
00:20:29
Let's do it.
00:20:31
Frequency modulator springs to mind.
00:20:34
Oh, come on.
00:20:35
We could get exciting.
00:20:37
Well, that was fun.
00:20:38
Is it over?
00:20:40
The Pro Audio Suite.
00:20:42
With thanks to Tribus.
00:20:43
And Austrian Audio.
00:20:45
Recorded using Source Connect.
00:20:46
Edited by Andrew Peters.
00:20:48
And mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging.
00:20:50
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
00:20:52
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
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00:21:00
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