SOUND DESIGN CORPORATION TAKES TV TO DVD WITH YAMAHA DM2000

—Remixes Janet Jackson's "All for You" HBO Concert Special to DVD—

BUENA PARK, CA (September 13, 2002)—Sound Design Corporation has taken delivery of two Yamaha DM2000 Digital Production Consoles, according to owner and engineer Paul Sandweiss. Since 1996, the Hollywood (CA)-based company has carved out a niche as a full audio production facility that specializes in recording and mixing music for live broadcasts, awards shows and concert specials. The one-stop shop handles pre-production, creation of packages for playback, plus onsite recording and mixing, and boasts a current roster that includes HBO's Def Poetry Jam, Nickelodeon's Brothers Garcia and Nick Cannon Show, and Comedy Central's The Man Show, and TNN's Oblivious.

Sound Design’s Dave Zeller (L), and Paul Sandweiss (R) with DM2000.

Both consoles are used with recently-installed Fairlight MFX3.48 DAW recording medium. "The new gear is used for recording and mixing, and gives us two redundant 24 track rooms," Sandweiss explains. "Forty eight tracks has become the standard for television productions today. We had been talking with various manufacturers about the changing requirements in TV sound, and what the next level of mixing product might be. We've used the Yamaha 02R at Sound Design since 1996 when we opened our first mix suite (Sound Design currently owns 11 Yamaha 02Rs and has four mix suites).

"When the 02R was introduced, people didn't believe a digital product with real-time automation, snapshot memory and instant parameter reset could be built into that footprint and price range, but it was. The DM2000 seemed to represent that 'next step' in smaller format digital consoles. This board was a natural for us, and having two gives us a lot of flexibility. In a post environment, having 96 in and 96 out in almost the same footprint is ideal, and working vertically instead of horizontally makes a lot of sense. I've sat at too many 14-ft. consoles and had to get up and walk seven feet to change a level.

With owner and engineer Paul Sandweiss (pictured) at the helm, Sound Design of Hollywood, CA has carved out a niche as an audio production facility specializing in recording and mixing music for live broadcasts, awards shows and concert specials.

"The dynamics on the DM2000 are much better. For our applications, the most valuable tools are having a dedicated—rather than a shared—solo button, as well as having balanced inserts in and out on all 24 inputs, and having 8, instead of 2, internal reverbs boxes inside the unit. Having the input/output automated patching on the DM2000 is as flexible as it gets. The console's recall is great—we do a lot of shows where there might be a production number that is a medley with three or four artists and recalling scenes between songs, or sections of songs, is seamless. Also, storing mixes and scenes using the new SmartMedia card is a great feature."

The first DM2000 was integral in remixing Janet Jackson's 'All For You' HBO March 2002 concert from Hawaii for DVD.

"We went to Hawaii and recorded the Janet Jackson show live with our 02R Flightpack, which is a compact case with three daisy-chained 02Rs feeding an MFX3.48 24-bit recorder. Because of the time difference between Hawaii and New York, HBO couldn't air it 'live.' Instead, they brought a transmission facility with them, which allowed for six hours of turnaround time. Janet did some extensive wardrobe changes, and those were used for pull-ups in between songs.

"Once the HBO crew did their picture fixes, we could clean up the audience edits so the ambience shifts weren't audible. Then, we could control the Digi-BETA with our Fairlight, and the crew could punch the audio back onto their tape, QC it and send it off to New York for the HBO broadcast.

"The first real assignment of the DM2000 was mixing the DVD. If there are re-broadcasts scheduled, we'll offer the artist the opportunity to do some audio touch-ups in post production. Janet came in and listened to the original recording, and was very happy with it. She basically didn't make any changes, and said, 'If you can make the DVD sound like that, great.' So we left the show as it had broadcast on HBO. They also made very few picture changes, and just included some wider shots to highlight the choreography. Working with Janet's music director (Paul Markovich), we used the DM2000 to make a 5.1 remix and a clean stereo mix. Most people think that a 5.1 will just fold down into a nice stereo mix," he explains, "but usually the stereo mix has to be re-done, as elements like the rear audience audio can get muddy when folded.

"When DVDs are made, or shows are edited, everything gets reset to a '1 hour up' time code. That makes it much easier for a network to do timings and integrate ad spots. We get an EDL (Edit Decision List) from the picture facility, which tells us where to put our audio referenced to the source time code from the taping, and then we just conform our audio to their video edit.

"With the DM2000, having access to all your master buss levels is a plus. We do a lot of international lay-backs and things where we might want to 'print' some busses lower than others. For instance, if a show has a lot of music as one of its elements, we might make a separate M&E (music and effects) build on channels 3 & 4 of a Digi-BETA if we're laying back, and put a stereo composite mix on channels 1 & 2. There could be different compression devices on the main stereo mix and the isolated M&E tracks, and we may want to adjust levels to those to compensate for that, so having to the buss levels stored in the scene reset is almost necessary."

Since the Jackson project, Sound Design has used the new Yamaha consoles on a variety of shows, including FOX's Essence Awards and American Idol, The ALMA Awards, The Stunt Awards and American Bandstand's 50th for ABC, and the Barry Manilow and Mark Anthony specials for CBS.

For more information on the DM2000, write Yamaha Corporation of America, Commercial Audio Systems Division, P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park, CA 90622; telephone (714) 522-9011; e-mail infostation@yamaha.com; or visit www.yamaha.com/proaudio.