New York, NY (October 24, 2024) – There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has been a real stress test for the audio industry. Some businesses closed and more than a few people quit or retired, but for those who chose to stick with it, adaptation became the name of the game. Broadcasters turned to new technologies to stay on the air, while live sound companies and some recording studios turned to livestreaming — all to keep the lights on and meet payroll.
Post-pandemic, it’s a changed world, and while business has returned, it hasn’t necessarily been at previous levels, except in live sound and, to some extent, record production.
But the current entrepreneurial climate does offer opportunities for anyone with the urge to survive. Joel Singer and Mitch Maketansky, partners and co-founders of Music Mix Mobile (M3), are survivors. Singer, who is responsible for the equipment choices and technical infrastructure of the company’s fleet of four remote audio trucks and several fly-pack mixing systems, notes that things got very busy after the pandemic but have now slowed down.
“We speak to a lot of companies in the entertainment sector and they all say the same thing,” he says. “Freelance A1s and A2s are not doing as much work as they have in the past two years. It seems that the only ones still doing well are the large travel organizations.”
That does not mean that M3 trucks are standing still. You can still find them at the larger award shows (the Grammys, Latin Grammys and CMAs), but also at music festivals and events organized by iHeart Music, among others. But a recent call from a Danish production company got Singer thinking. “They called us and said, ‘We’re going to do a web stream in the US. Do you have a compelling truck?” In Europe they don’t use the word Atmos; they use the word compelling. Then we started getting calls from other customers who also wanted to do immersive testing.”
PAST MEETS PRESENT
Two of M3’s trucks, Eclipse and Voyager, travel as a pair to the major live music broadcast events, mixing in alternating artists based on the show’s running order. To offer everyone the same platform, the two trucks must remain identically equipped. For Singer, Maketansky and staff engineer Peter Gary, this meant that the ideal truck to upgrade for full-time compelling work was M3’s aptly named Phoenix mobile.
Singer started remote recording in 2003 and introduced its OSR (OnSite Recording Services) truck shortly thereafter. With the help of friends from Nashville, he outfitted the truck with what may have been one of the first Yamaha DM2000 digital desks and Aphex 1788 external mic preamps in the country. His state-of-the-art, all-digital OSR truck caught the attention of New York-based Effanel Music, which had had great success with its L7 Music truck and its very expensive AMS Neve Capricorn digital console. Looking for Effanel for more modern, cost-conscious work, the company called in Singer – and its new truck.
Singer later left the company to form M3 with his founders, and when Effanel, which had been acquired by XM Satellite, closed its doors, Firehouse Productions bought all its assets. In 2014, about to purchase a new vehicle for the M3, Singer called Firehouse to see if they happened to still have the old OSR truck body.
“Their response was, ‘Get him off the property, he’s yours!’” Singer recalls. “Firehouse used it as a van and had the control room removed from the chassis. The box was still in good condition; front carriers, AC units, the whole deal. Singer then took the OSR box and a new chassis to M3’s regular truck builder, and voila, with a rebuild of the audio technology, out came the reborn Phoenix.
PHENIX IN ATMOS
Over the years, M3 has standardized and continually upgraded much of its audio equipment, from desks to external microphone preamps and transport systems. At the core of all vehicles and fly packs are Lawo consoles. “We own three MC56-2 systems, two with Nova73 HD cores and one with a Nova 73 compact core. We also have two MC36 systems,” Singer reports. He recently purchased a 32-channel 73HD core for an additional fly-pack system from two broadcast companies that were going bankrupt.
The Lawo desks and cores have been upgraded to ST 2110, as have M3’s external Dallis and PowerCore racks. “We can share networks, we can share SRC; we can do a lot of different network-type things with these systems,” he says, noting that each truck’s preamp, 168 channels, is typically dedicated. “Sharing preamps over a network in a recording environment is not our way, especially at larger shows where it is essential to optimize the systems for each act, but using SMPTE 2110 for the other benefits it offers is a game changer.”
None of M3’s Lawo desks were the ones to support native immersive panning and monitoring without complicated outboard computers, so Singer consulted the manufacturer and industry peers to find the best path forward. Choices were limited without expensive upgrades, so the optimal solution turned out to be configuring the Phoenix desk with a 5.1 bus, plus a 4.0 bus for the height channels. “We did a 5.1.4 setup with one central monitor control, so everything still works as normal,” Singer notes. “We have good centralized monitoring at the agency, without the need for external monitoring systems.”
M3 weathers the pandemic
This latest upcycling of Phoenix, 10 years after its initial rebirth, also gave Singer the opportunity to rethink its choice of monitors. At the request of a former business partner, M3 trucks were equipped with M&K speakers for a long time. For the new Phoenix 5.1.4 setup, Singer has returned to Genelec, its previous monitor brand, installing 8341 LCR speakers, 8331 for LR/RR and four 8330s for the height channels. A 7360 sub provides the bass.
“We put them in with Will Eggleston from Genelec and man, they sound so good, so clear and musical, and they have the sound pressure level you want in the room,” he says. A Stream Deck, integrated with Genelec’s GLM management software, allows an operator to enable or disable bass management, mute the speakers and switch between presets, which can be adjusted and saved for any guest engineers.
“We are also very excited to be working with our plug-in partner Waves, and the immersive capabilities in the current product line, and what may be in the pipeline,” Singer added.
M3 already has a number of major immersive projects under its belt, capturing audio for Katy Perry, Alicia Keys, Luke Combs and others. “Now we can use the Phoenix truck to record audio for immersive release while simultaneously giving the customer a taste of the possibilities of what this soundscape could sound like,” says Singer. “We are equipped and ready for live immersive broadcasts.”
