AirTools 6200 digital microphone processor

[chrish]

I just received the first of of what will be many AirTools 6200's and did a fast glance through the 6200 and RC-1 users guide.

The installation and level setting are pretty straight foward however I was
surprised there seem to be no sample settings for different formats to use as
suggestions as a place to start similar to initial starts for different formats on an Omnia or Optimod.

Obviously the acoustics and voices are different in every situation....like most
engineers I don't have hours to waste, it would be nice to be able to ball park it quickly.
Looking for warm rich natural sound...very lightly compressed, two examples
are Westwood One's Love Lines mic's and or Howard Stern's when he was run from
WXRK.
I would appreciate any quickstart setting to build from, at the moment using
EV-RE-20's

thanks

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Does anyone have some settings for the 6200 they'd like to share? So far I haven't found what I consider the right settings yet for the ones I've set up. I called Symetrix and they basically said there are no presets. How handy. I'm using SM7s...

Thanks!

 

[cgould]

You can make some pretty sweet sounds with that mic processor.

Unfortunately, I do not have any presets to share (I wish i did). I bought a ton of those during my run at CBS Radio Cleveland, and the preset files remained there after I left.

You can re-arrange all the processing blocks in any way you want using the PC Application (click and drag a processing block to where you want, and it "rewires" itself).

-Cornelius

 

[dtube1]

I'd be happy to make some presets for SM7's and RE20's on those - but I don't have one to work with. If anyone has one to loan, I'll do the work. Personally, I prefer to work with discrete boxes as I have found all the analog mic processors to have individual compromises inherant with their topology. Working with a digital unit though interests the heck out of me; I just don't have need for one right now.
-D

 

[oldiesstation]

Someone had quite a few of these units on Ebay awhile back,could barely give them away.Maybe they are hard to set up.Best i remember they went for less than $500.00 each.

 

[RealityCheckr]

I don't think it is really a tightly format specific thing so sharing presets will be of limited utility. This is no cook book, but creativity...

If you don't have the time to do your job and set them up, give one to the production director and let him/her play around with it and come up with some settings for you to evaluate for on-air use (of course s/he will also have settings to be used in the production environment that may not be appropriate for on-air).

Then work with the PD from there.

Good luck

 

[dtube1]

(of course s/he will also have settings to be used in the production environment that may not be appropriate for on-air).

Excellent point. Your processing can wreak havoc with what sounds good through the Prod room monitors. IME, mic processing in general sounds best with minimal application of each tool, especially EQ. Final processing sets the tone of the on-air sound - mic processing should just get the mics in the same ballpark with the produced music on-air (the exception might be de-essing, though). Again though, this is just my opinion.
-D

 

[RealityCheckr]

I agree. Mic processors, IMHO are mainly to "fix" certain common problems

Deessing

Studio background room noise

Poor mic technique

For this reason they should be used as gently as possible.

Excellent point. Your processing can wreak havoc with what sounds good through the Prod room monitors. IME, mic processing in general sounds best with minimal application of each tool, especially EQ. Final processing sets the tone of the on-air sound - mic processing should just get the mics in the same ballpark with the produced music on-air (the exception might be de-essing, though). Again though, this is just my opinion.
-D

 

[wgliradio]

i'm not a big fan of any Symmetrix/Airtools signal processing. I found the Airtools complicated and that same symmetrix sound when you are done.

Focusrite and Vorsis make better mic processors... and if you can get a Hnat Hindes Mic Maze, hold onto it for dear life.

 

[BuzzRadio]

One of my pet peevs is a digital audio processor manufacturer who rave on about how great their product sounds and how it'll make you "#1 in the market" yet they fail to send it out with a few basic presets to get you going. Whilst many people love playing with presets and menus, not everybody wants to do that any would be happy for a factory-preset that the designers dialled-in.

 

[RealityCheckr]

One of my pet peevs is a digital audio processor manufacturer who rave on about how great their product sounds and how it'll make you "#1 in the market" yet they fail to send it out with a few basic presets to get you going. Whilst many people love playing with presets and menus, not everybody wants to do that any would be happy for a factory-preset that the designers dialled-in.

Yeah, I know. What really pisses me of is when you pay $30,000+ on a car and they don't even include a driver. Or even a road map!

Oh well...

 

[dtube1]

Symetrix is thinking they're selling those boxes to audio engineers, not radio engineers. The average audio guy is going into that box with many years of experience with compressors, gates, eq's, etc. Conversely, the radio engineer is approaching it with experience in processing boxes where everything is pre-configured to a point. I'm not implying that radio guys don't know what a comp or gate is; rather that the audio engineer knows the individual processing blocks intimately and can visualize (auralize?) the results of all those parts interacting in various configurations before they even power-up the box. I kinda straddle both worlds because I'm a sick bastard ;D. I'd also argue that most of the CE's I know do not have time to spend a couple afternoons playing with mic processors. So, although I agree completely with RC's points, I also think Symetrix should have spent a bit of time creating some basic presets that would survive the average air chain. How hard would it be to secure an RE20 and SM7 along with an 8500 and Omnia-6 to experiment a bit? Personally, I would view that as a helluva fun afternoon
-Darren

 

[oldiesstation]

At about half the price of the 6200,the Vorsis M-1 is a much better sounding unit and a heck of alot easier to get up and going.Has some pretty good presets,too.i think the 6200 has cooled way down(remember the Aphex 2020?).Symetrix came up with some strange boxes after the 528E,like the 602 and 628.Some of those units suffered from boot up problems and were nerve racking.My choice the M-1.

 

[cgould]

UGH!!! The 628...what a disaster! PIA to make that thing sound even partially decent. 6200 was MUCH easier in that regard....but you do have to spend some time with it...something that is extremely valuable in today's world.

Would be nice if it (the 6200) came up with even simple AGC / gating out of the box. From what I remember all it did was to be a mic preamp...no processing or anything. Had to dig in to make it do something. Come to think of it...the mic preamps may have been bypassed by default too! ???

This way the busy engineer (which one isn't?) can at least have something happening until there is time to load up the PC software to set it up (recommended by me)-- and figure out the confusing "download" to upload a preset or save to computer -- hint: uses same term "download" for both. ???

Trying to adjust from the front panel is just as much a joke as the 628 user interface, I must say. You HAVE to use the PC software to really make progress unless you want to bang your head against a wall for a few hours.

Once you get past that, it really does make some sweet sounding mic audio, though.

-C

 

[wgliradio]

UGH!!! The 628...what a disaster! PIA to make that thing sound even partially decent. 6200 was MUCH easier in that regard....but you do have to spend some time with it...something that is extremely valuable in today's world.

WOW! I have a 628 on the air with an RE-27 and it kicks ass. I think the compressor is much smoother than the 528E and I didn't find it that difficult at all. All the jocks rave about it and have their own preset (including one who said he hasn't sounded that good since he was at KFRC in the 80's!).

Again, not the biggest Symmetix fan, but the 628 sounds pretty good FWIW... better than the airtools IMHO.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Interesting conversation, folks. I started out back when we had TUBE limiters and then came tube levelers or as we called them, compressors. I studied the schematics enough to understand what they were doing.

Fast forward to today. I want to get back into some audio stuff and radio stuff. I work on concepts. Just like I studied the circuit schematics back then, I wish I could get my hands on the processor code of today's digital equipment.

Somehow or another compression, expansion, attack time, release time so not mean the same thing in the digital world as they did in the world of tubes and analog process. I find myself doing a lot of stabbing-in-the-dark to find settings that work for me.

There must be a book I haven't found.

 

[cgould]

UGH!!! The 628...what a disaster! PIA to make that thing sound even partially decent. 6200 was MUCH easier in that regard....but you do have to spend some time with it...something that is extremely valuable in today's world.

WOW! I have a 628 on the air with an RE-27 and it kicks ass. I think the compressor is much smoother than the 528E and I didn't find it that difficult at all. All the jocks rave about it and have their own preset (including one who said he hasn't sounded that good since he was at KFRC in the 80's!).

Again, not the biggest Symmetix fan, but the 628 sounds pretty good FWIW... better than the airtools IMHO.

Nice to know someone got it to work! It is always possible that the one we had back when had an older / not as good firmware or something. ...

Interesting conversation, folks. I started out back when we had TUBE limiters and then came tube levelers or as we called them, compressors. I studied the schematics enough to understand what they were doing.

Fast forward to today. I want to get back into some audio stuff and radio stuff. I work on concepts. Just like I studied the circuit schematics back then, I wish I could get my hands on the processor code of today's digital equipment.

Somehow or another compression, expansion, attack time, release time so not mean the same thing in the digital world as they did in the world of tubes and analog process. I find myself doing a lot of stabbing-in-the-dark to find settings that work for me.

There must be a book I haven't found.

There's a lot of things you can do in digital that cannot be done in analog, and to date, much of the DSP advances have been in that arena.

This is why its hard to do a "retro" sound with most DSP processors as the topology "kind of resembles" what would have been in an analog airchain...but alas, they ain't no analog air chain.

If you don't have to push the envelope for that loudness that smokes the speakers in your Toyota, you can adjust many DSP processors to resemble some analog processor chains. But if you are in a situation where the loudness levels have surpassed the capabilities of a classic analog air chain, then it will be kind of hard to replicate that analog sound when relying on new tech to get you more loudness.

As far as classic tube limiters and such, the folks at Universal Audio have been busily modeling their classic Urei tube compressor / limiters in software form. I haven't heard them myself, but have been hearing good things about that project.

-Cornelius

 

[dtube1]

I'm probably going to get laughed off the board for this suggestion, but I would love to hear a dsp-based mic processor that used a tube pentode (running high-voltage) for the mic preamp followed by a slow-averaging (see also "sluggish) optical comp THEN into the A/D. That to me would be a great - albeit expensive - front-end for a mic processor. Hey Corny - I'll do the tube and opto sections if you do the DSP
-Darren

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There's a lot of things you can do in digital that cannot be done in analog, and to date, much of the DSP advances have been in that arena.

This is why its hard to do a "retro" sound with most DSP processors as the topology "kind of resembles" what would have been in an analog airchain...but alas, they ain't no analog air chain.

Lots of good information in your post. Don't misunderstand my comments. I am not trying to get a retro sound. I am happy with the digital processing. My description of the old systems is that I UNDERSTOOD how to twist the knobs and achieve the amount of compression I wanted, the amount of limiting I wanted, etc. I go into the control screens on a program like Adobe Audition and they give me blanks to put in whatever numbers I want, and to me they are not "intuitive". In trying to get the sound I want I feel like, as we used to say out in the country where I grew up,... "I feel like a blind dog in a meat house." I can smell the goodies, but I can't find my way to them. They seem to be a bit out of my reach.

I am still looking for that book, that article that will "open my eyes" on understanding how to adjust the circuits of Digital Signal Processing.

 

[gtomas]

I never liked the 528 that much... I know it was/is used on a lot of US stations, but to me it just sounded a bit crude. You could hear the compression, yet it wasn't very effective. I much preferred the classic dbx 160/166 when it comes to good voice compressors. Out of the new dbx line, the 286 although it's a fairly cheap unit, also has a very good compressor. It can create quite a solid density on vocals, while still sounding natural. It probably has something to do with it being designed by Bob Orban

I would disagree with the comment made that voice processors are used only to fix problems... I'm sure there are people out there trying to use gate in a voice processor to reduce bad studio acoustics and things like that, but those are just poor band-aids. It's always best to fix the root cause of the problem. Good acoustics, good mic and a voice processor that is used for an artistic effect, is the winning combination for a serious broadcaster if you ask me. An EQ on announcer/DJ mic can improve either the size and boldness of the voice or intelligibility or both. And a good compressor to follow is essential. Voices have very high dynamics. Especially compared to music and especially today's music. If your announcers are not dynamically processed, they will sound thin and weak compared to music, if played back at the same level. So you usually end up playing them louder, which makes your processor work harder. That may not be a problem when the announcers/DJs talk dry between music, as I understand they do on most US stations. But where I come from, the radio sounds a bit different and the announcer will talk dry only on a very, very rare occasions. Basically only when (s)he wants to make a very dramatic and/or serious effect. At all other times, (s)he will talk over music or a music bed. If there are drastic differences in dynamics between the voice and the music, it doesn't sound that good. The processor has to work harder to even out the dynamics and this can be obvious. Any processor sounds best when it's doing only very little, like for example processing a song that has consistent level, dynamics and frequency balance. If you compress the announcer/DJ to reduce its dynamics closer to that of the music, the exchange between her/him and the music will sound much better and more natural because the difference in dynamics will be smaller and the processor will not have to work as hard. On top of that, if you drive the vocal a little hotter, it will dominate the processors AGC sections slightly which can have a ducking effect on the music "below" the voice. With a good gain-riding technique on the board, the two can complement each other. It requires a talented board-op with a good ear to make it work best, but if done right, sounds really good. The vocal will cut through the music, it will be intelligible at all times, yet you can still hear the music and it will fill up in natural pauses in speech. That's how I used mic processors anyway...


Regards,
Goran Tomas