Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/571027
GET INTO GEAR www.postmagazine.com 35 POST SEPTEMBER 2015 ticipation," says Bonardi. "We needed tone modeling that rivaled digital amp modelers on the market. To achieve this, we devel- oped several plug-ins with Audiokinetic for the specific purpose of recreating those iconic tones." He worked with Audiokinetic's co-founder Simon Ashby to make that happen. "I'd give them a design and they'd go nuts with it — we really squeezed every horse out of the console hardware," says Bonardi. "From there, we were able to create hundreds of amps, guitar pedals, and speaker cabinets for Tone Designer." Rocksmith 2014 introduced the new Session Mode, and consequently, a new set of challenges. In Session Mode, an AI band accompanies, and adapts to, a play- er's performance. Players can customize their virtual band from over 70 different instruments. "We knew that players were going to want to change everything about their band and the jam session, like instruments, key, scale, tempo, groove, style — there was no way we were going to be able to provide this flexibility using .wav files," explains Bonardi. So Audiokinetic built a whole MIDI infra- structure for Wwise. "Our solution turned out to be sampler instruments powered by MIDI data. That opened us up to ma- nipulating the MIDI data, which allowed us to transpose notes, adjust tempo, change key, change scale, and more, all in realtime. Without that, Session Mode would not have been able to exist as it does today." Rocksmith isn't the only game that can take advantage of the MIDI features in Wwise. It's open to all users of the software. "The new MIDI features crack open a world of opportunities to take advantage of with Wwise. There is so much potential for creating truly unique experiences," says Bonardi. "I'm very excited about the future of interactive music. We're in an awesome time. " IZOTOPE RX FINAL MIX Toronto-based studio owner Damian Kearns is a jack of all audio post trades. "I think of myself as a Swiss Army knife. When someone needs any type of post audio work done, I show up with the ap- propriate tools," he says, even if 'showing up' involves traveling outside Toronto. Recently, Kearns traveled nearly 1,000 miles to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to work on the upcoming reality series Polar Bear Town at Frank Digital (www.frankdigital. ca). He brought along his mobile studio: a MacBook Air with Pro Tools 11 HD, and a spare iLok 2 carrying duplicate licenses for his favorite software, such as iZotope's RX Final Mix and RX Loudness Control. "I know most places might not have these plug-ins because they're new, but I need to have them with me, so, I bring them. That basically gives you an idea of what I think of the software." RX Final Mix (www.izotope.com) com- bines an eight-band Dynamic EQ and a True Peak limiter in one plug-in, offering users the ability to sculpt the frequency ranges of dialogue, sound effects and mu- sic. It supports surround formats up to 7.1. Additionally, Kearns uses RX Final Mix in the standalone version of RX 4 Advanced. By selecting the Dynamic EQ from RX Final Mix in place of the stan- dard static EQ in RX 4 Advanced, Kearns says, "I can set a threshold and have it compress or expand. That is really handy, especially for taming rumble or sibilance, or even trying to add some air back in." Prior to RX Final Mix, Kearns used Ozone 6 for Dynamic EQ, but he finds the one in RX Final Mix has more bands with tighter EQs, and lower latency. "What's great is I use it to break down individual elements and maximize each one of them. It has the same great sound as Ozone 6 but in a more post-centric iteration." Kearns also prefers the True Peak limiter in RX Final Mix, which is based on the IRC II limiter in Ozone 6. "The Final Mix limiter is class-leading. It doesn't have the artifacts I usually associate with digital limiting, meaning it's not harsh and there's not the typical thinning out of the sound I associ- ate with other limiters." As a beta tester for iZotope RX Final Mix, Kearns says he was able to influ- ence the plug-in's design, particularly regarding CPU usage. "With some com- panies, you send in an email and you're not part of the discussion, but iZotope really listens. You are part of the team," he says. In Version 1.01, users now have the option to hard by-pass the limiter and choose a different limiter model to bring down the overall CPU usage substantially. "The scalability of RX Final Mix is a vital part of why I find it is such a wonderful tool. Now that there's a low latency limiter setting available, I can actually run multiple instances of RX Final Mix on my puny MacBook Air without absolutely killing my track count. When I hit the studio to finalize my mixes, I can upscale to the highest quality settings and let my mix shine a bit more." From documentaries to commercials, Kearns uses RX Final Mix on all types of projects to add punch and sparkle to his mixes. For example, while work- ing on The Complete Game: The Rick Langford Story, a baseball documentary for Rogers Sportsnet (a major sports network in Canada), Kearns edited and pre-mixed the show in stereo and 5.1 on his MacBook Air, then took everything to a dub stage for his final on-air mix. "The show had a quick turn-around; only two-and-a-half days for edit and mix," explains Kearns. "In the mix theater, I instantiated iZotope RX Final Mix on all my stems and mastered the show in five minutes. That's all it took for me to get the sound I wanted." Kearns continues: "The tools we have available now, like iZotope RX Final Mix, allow you to work in less than ideal circumstances,. You can walk in somewhere, plug RX Final Mix into your project and it brings your mix to life." Damian Kearns (below) used iZotope's RX Final Mix to add some punch to this baseball doc.