Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/24970
Audio Innovations Thomas Barefoot’s goal was to build a small speaker that could do the job of a larger mastering speaker. His products are installed at DTS in their engineering and software development studio (left). November of 2010. It’s an application for the iPad called V-Control. It’s a virtual con- trol surface for Pro Tools. It can be used as your main control surface, but I think it is going to be used mostly as an add-on with an existing control surface. Some people will always prefer to grab and hold a real fader instead of a touch screen. But the iPad’s ad- vantage is the fact that you cannot pick up your D-Command control surface and move it around.The iPad’s portability is its biggest feature. I am intrigued by the iPad, and how it is potentially an indicator of where things are going with computers.” Neyrinck has another strong inclination as to where the future of audio and video post is going, which is to a tapeless work- flow.“Videotape is going to go away eventu- ally.That is a huge, gigantic change that is un- derway. It’s slow but gaining momentum. That will potentially change my products. SoundCode Exchange exchanges poly- phonic broadcast Wav files.That is strictly file based and it was created since that is an emerging thing for file-based workflows.And there is a variation on that coming out called SoundCode Exchange MXF.We are invest- ing a lot in MXF file technology, which stands for Material Exchange Format. It’s a stan- dards way of packaging audio and video into files. It’s similar to QuickTime, but it’s all stan- dards based.There are hundreds of SMPTE standards that define it. It’s non-proprietary and completely open. It’s being used more and more for file-based workflows. One as- pect of it is that it is a replacement for tape.” Neyrinck concludes: “I can’t predict the future with any real accuracy, but I can ask, ‘Is there going to be videotape 100 years from now?’No, there will be no such thing. Is 34 Post • February 2011 there going to be videotape one year from now? Most likely, yes.When and how that change happens is a mystery, but there is sig- nificant momentum starting.” BAREFOOT SOUND Thomas Barefoot, president/CTO of Barefoot Sound (www.barefootsound.com) in San Francisco is not typical when it comes to thinking about sound. When he first started out, his self-proclaimed audio naivete led to a revolutionary design for loudspeaker technology.The MicroMain line of speakers combines a tweeter,woofer and the subwoofer all in one box.The key is the dual subwoofers mounted on the sides of the speaker, which challenges conventional thinking. “I’m relatively new to the recording industry,” says Barefoot. “I only started around 2002 while I was working full time as a research engineer at Intel. I never thought I would sell speakers, but my idea was to build one set of speakers that could do all the stages of recording, mixing and master- ing. I wanted speakers that were mastering- type tower speakers, but sized down to your average size near-field monitors that could fit into a studio type situation. “I had the view that people should not be using crappy book-end type speakers for tracking, mixing or any kind of production, and then sending it off to a mastering engi- neer at the very end who kind of fixes everything. Mastering engineers are known to have the real deal when it comes to speakers, but I could not understand why people were accustomed to hearing the best possible speakers only at the very end and not throughout their production process? Why would someone would want www.postmagazine.com some lesser speaker for one process, like tracking, and then higher-end speakers for another process, like mastering? In fact, I even made the point that if one was to use lesser grade speakers anywhere in the workflow, it should be at the end rather than at the beginning. During the mastering stage, you should be accounting for the con- sumer grade playback speakers rather than the top mastering speakers. But at the be- ginning of the process, you are dealing with very wide dynamics, wide frequency ranges, and high-resolution files. That’s when you need a great speaker that can handle it.” Barefoot’s goal of building a smaller speaker that could do the job of a larger mastering speaker meant he needed to re- think speaker design. “The real thing that took off was the MM27, which was a case of form following function.To build a very big speaker in a smaller box and in order to get what I wanted, I had to move the sub- woofers on the side. At first, it was just the logistics of it so I could keep it down to the size of a near-field monitor. But, then the other benefits — like dual opposing forces, which cancels out the inertia of the cones, and the more solid frames, combined with the fact that bass waves are omni-directional — all became very important as well. “Since I was making a big speaker into a little box, I viewed it as a set of positives rather than negatives. I did not want to ap- proach it as though I am going to lose per- formance and see it is a drawback. I tried to make the smaller size a net-positive and use it as an advantage. For example, because a small box is more solid than a large box, the speaker cabinets are much more solid than any of the big speakers.That way, you have