Audio Technology - Issue 18

What would an Australian know about sound? I am alone for Christmas this year because my girl has jetted off to the Galapagos Islands for a well-earned and well-deserved holiday. She and her girlfriend are diving with all the cool creatures that Charles Darwin described in his well-known and very historic thesis on the evolution. I figure it would be very cool to be with her diving with the lizards and patting those enormous turtles but, in my own not so well known thesis of evolution, the first principle states quite clearly: "thou shall not spend every cent you have building the best 5.1 mastering studio ever made and three months later jet of to the remotest part of the world to pat 300 year old turtles".

Principle two is: "thou shall let a woman do whatever makes her happy with her money". Principle three is: "make it sound good... then stop".

A few years ago I was in Ireland with my girl. We landed at the airport and an Irish chap whose record I was producing met me. He drove us back to his flat; we dumped our bags and went straight down to the pub. Within 45 minutes of setting foot in Ireland I was in a Temple Bar hotel in Dublin sipping Guinness. As far as I could tell everybody else in Dublin was there with us, as the place was packed to the roof - it was the pub to be in. I thought Dublin was very cool, but aside from my Irish singer friend and my girl, I knew nobody - or so I thought. Pretty soon faces started appearing quite familiar, the first saying, "fook Rick O'Neil how are you? Great to see you, how's your cat?" My girl squeezes my arm and asks, "who's this?". I have no idea but I figure he knows me, it's his country and he has met my cat so I had better be polite. "How are you?", I respond. "Oh grand", says the fellow, as he introduces me to another, then another, then another, and pretty soon we are drinking with 15 or so Irish men talking about music and how they all parallel their lives with Bono, and how U2 own all of Ireland and have fucked at least everybody's sister at least once... Ireland's like that, they are very proud of their country, they are very proud of their music, and their history.

The time we arrived happened to be the week of the Irish Music Awards, and the next night we went out my singer friend wanted to show off the town. So we started off at the same pub in Temple Bar and it's filled with the same faces except this time we are greeted like old friends. We met up with a man called Olaf. Olaf is the editor of the coolest music paper in Ireland. This guy is obviously very powerful in the Irish music scene and our crowd of new friends step a few paces back in some kind of demonstration of respect. Our party shrinks back down to four: my girl, me, the singer and Olaf. As the night wears on we decide the only place to be is The Kitchen', which is U2's own club. It's not an easy place to get into and a good proportion of Dublin's nightlife was lined up outside to do just that. With our journo friend and a mobile phone we are whisked away through the side door and, much to the disgust and envy of the 20 or so people that I now knew in Ireland, we are given our own booth in the back room. The back room in The Kitchen is reserved for rock stars, actors, U2 and their friends. It seemed that every time I went to the bathroom the common folk,
the ones that I had been drinking with earlier, were suddenly giving me dirty looks, and muttering amongst themselves. Although everybody in Ireland seemed to know U2 personally, only about 100 people were allowed in the cool part of their club, so I went from being a 'grand guy' to being an Australian wanker' in the space of about two hours...

Bear with me, I am nudging slowly to the point. Which is: I had never considered myself an Australian anything until that night. I don't know what happened to my sense of patriotism when I was growing up but I was never proud of Australian music or our history or our world achievements... that is until that night in Dublin. I guess the cultural cringe was well and truly cast into my psyche. When you are in the coolest part of the coolest club on the coolest night, and you're guests of the coolest band, and people are whispering things about you and your country, you have to get affected.

I heard these words and my world changed forever: "Who is that?", "Oh, some Australian sound guy", "What the fook would an Australian know about sound?". As I said I have never had a patriotic bone in my body, and when pushed about my heritage I would have usually said "I'm, Irish", having never even seen the place. But when you are pissed and people are resenting you for jumping the queue and then using the word Australian as a put down... well something's got to give.

I returned to my table and sat down. I started looking around, taking a good long look. One of the interesting things about Irish folk is that they have had their gene pool well and truly emptied by hundred of years of English rule. Historically every time a pretty girl turned up in a village she was married off to the English lord and without any stretch of the truth the Irish populous today is amongst the funniest looking bunch of people I have ever seen - despite popular belief The Corrs could not actually be an Irish band because there aren't that many good looking people in Ireland, let alone in one Irish family. Pissed and hurting for all Australians, I look around this club and ask my friend Olaf, "if we are in the coolest bar in Ireland where the hell do all the good looking people go?". He said slowly and without hesitation, "London". [Okay Rick, I think you've evened the score! - CH.]

What the hell would an Australian know about sound? Well let's forget about our really big bands - because there are quite a few who have changed the face of world music culture - instead, let me give you a short tour of the Australian version of the Galapagos Islands and the evolution of sound. Excuse me if this is a bit of a stretch, but my evolution theory is only designed for that occasion in life when you find out for the first time you are proud of your heritage... and, when it happens to you, you'll probably be pissed at the time, and this will make a whole lot more sense. In 1852 an Australian-born lad John Sinclair got off a ship in North America and headed for the Klondike gold fields. He was a little late for the rush of '49 because Australia was a long way away, even in those days. So instead of panning for gold in the rivers he worked up in the reef mines deep under ground. In those days before they blasted some rock out the way, a high frequency whistle was blown (like the ones that sailors use for signalling), this sound (about a 4k signal) bounced around the tunnels and told anybody in ear shot to clear out as there was about to be a blast. It was a difficult noise to hear underground and quite often someone was underground - it was very dangerous work .Sinclair, in his wisdom, invented a contraption that had two tones - one about 4k and one about 250Hz. When you cranked the handle on this device, the two tones reacted with each other (creating lots of interesting harmonics), and the resulting noise was very loud and covered a huge spectrum of sound. The thing was unmistakable for miles, it wailed like the mythical Sirens of the sea. Furthermore, his invention turned out to be a sound idea - the siren has been very useful ever since.

At the end of World War II, with Europe flattened and the rest of the world's industry scattered to the wind, the world's leaders set up trade agreements which lasted well into the '60s. Different countries worked in different areas of expertise. The Indians would make the rubber, the Americans made the tyres. Meanwhile, Australians produced whatever they could (usually wool and wheat). But in one very interesting electronic trade agreement between America and Australia, amalgamated wireless A.WA and R.C.A America figured a good use of resources was that America would make one kind of vacuum tube and Australia would make another. Both countries would label the tubes as if RCA made them all. RCA made most of the world's vacuum tube amplifiers (ie the gain stage) and AWA made more complex power and radio types. Some bright spark in AWA Sydney Australia invented a radio tube whose output could be varied depending on a sidechain circuit within it and created the vari-mu tube. This is interesting because when applied to RCA gain circuits (and with a bit of trickery), hey presto you have the makings of the best compressors/limiters ever heard. If you've ever heard a Fairchild limiter or a RCA BA6 that's the sound of an Australian vari-mu tube pumping away, and that was the sound of recorded music - nearly every record ever made and broadcasted prior to end of 1970 was flowing with one of our tubes. Open up any sound magazine and look for the word vari-mu, its still as popular as ever.

In 1970 some clever Australian chaps, Theile and Small, took on the task of creating formulas for making predictable speaker boxes, Their formulas when applied to vented bass boxes are the primary design rules for low frequency systems. Everytime you hear a subwoofer, you are hearing the sound of some Australian shaking your insides out.

Let's not forget the clever Australian Bruce Jackson who figured out in 1985 the digital rules as applied by the Sony Corporation were not right. And when everybody else was marvelling at the wonders of digital recording Bruce, an Australian, was fixing the sound, getting rid of the harshness. His digital filters were retrofitted into nearly every Sony and Mitsubishi digital recorder and lots and lots of 1630 mastering system. Bruce's gone on to do other things now, but at the time his work established a premier digital audio company. You may have heard of it... Apogee Electronics.

And what about the Avalon stuff? Winton Morro figured out way before anybody I ever heard of, that outboard preamps were better then running through the console. He came into Festival Studios in the late '80s with his beautiful boxes that use class A discrete circuits running on 80 volt rails (that's about the theoretical maximum voltage). His first couple of prototypes used to blow up about one day in 10. When I asked him why he used 80 volt rails when they fail one time in 10 he said, "because high voltage gives you massive headroom and massive headroom sounds better. I use 80 volt systems, which I can nearly get stable most the time, because 81 volts blows up every time". The Avalon stuff has been rock solid for over 10 years now and because no one in Australia would support his vision for superlative sound, Avalon moved to America. So now we're in a weird position of lusting after American gear that in fact's really Australian.

Oh yeah... what about Duntech's speakers? Duntech are internationally renowned as being the best hifi speakers on the planet. Guess what? They make 'em in Adelaide.

I'm sure I could go on like this all day, but I'm tired, and no I haven't been drinking. What would an Australian know about sound? Everything you have ever heard.

And next time your pissing in an Irish pub and some belligerent three-eyed shortie makes fun of your country. be prepared. Who knows you might just make us proud.

Back to article index