Ron MacLeod
Distance Disappears With Portable Drives

Dopamine MacLeod is currently doing DVD work for Surround Associates, while scoring, doing sound design, and surround mixing for several independent films. One of which, Kontent Films “Dopamine,” just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, while another, “(tongue tongue stone) G.W. Leibnitz” by NY artist Ellen Zweig, showed at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Fest.

Even though he’s currently based in San Francisco, MacLeod insists it’s very easy to work with directors in Los Angeles and New York — because of how portable technology has become. “The people I work with in film just messenger their entire drive over with all the DV and audio assets on it. I have Final Cut Pro, so I can open it up, check out the footage, OMFI it into my DAW and then get right to work on it,” he says. (OMFI is Open Media Framework Interchange, a file exchange protocol; DAW is Digital Audio Workstation.)

“We can internally sync the straight DV directly from the drive — via a Final Cut Pro QuickTime project file — so we don’t need to burn valuable time compressing it first. And because we’re referencing the Final Cut project file, which references the DV assets on the FireWire drive — and NOT an actual DV movie file — edit changes can be easily emailed immediately if they’re under 1MB,” says MacLeod.

“I also use FireWire to monitor my DV on an external monitor, so I don’t need to take up valuable screen real estate. We burn and exchange a lot of CD-ROMs and DVDs to run checks. And then when I’m done, I just return the drive with the completed work on it, all the way to having it Dolby AC3 encoded,” he adds.

Surround gives the artist the ability to let people become a part of their art, experiencing it from within like the artist does upon creation and performance. Mac-Based Studios
For his studio set up, MacLeod runs Nuendo on two Power Mac G4s, plus he uses a PowerBook G4 with 24bit/96k RME Hammerfalls for audio I/O. “I use my dual 1.25MHz as the master DAW with Nuendo and my UAD-1. The PowerBook is dedicated to Reason, and my other dual tower is used for Live, Reaktor and a host of VST instruments as well as my plug-ins: Waves, Pluggo, GRM, PSP, and most every other existing plug-in. I use all three machines networked together via VST-Link, so they act as one large system,” he explains.

MacLeod uses a USB pen drive to take home his work at night. “I can do a lot of editing and programming at home at night with an Oxygen 8 keyboard and a PowerBook,” says MacLeod. And for his surround mixes, MacLeod uses portable NHT pro monitors with a Bluesky Bass Manager Monitor Controller and Sub.

“I’ve used Genelecs and I’m a longtime Tannoy guy. But I find that these NHT’s are really surgical — you can hear every little nuance and noise,” he says. “But I want that, so I can really hear what’s going on. Then I’ll also go check the final against the Tannoys. The mixes translate really well to both home and theater. I really like this set up for its portability as well — I can take them with me for consistency wherever I’m working. They’re like the ‘NS10s’ of surround.” (Yamaha NS-10 monitor speakers)

Conveying Emotion
MacLeod also sees surround as having a greater future in music because it adds another dimension through which artists can express emotion. “Songwriters and composers are poets using music and sounds to get across the feelings that they have inside where words can’t always take you,” says MacLeod.

“And that’s the emotion that I feel in surround, which could be utilized by artists. It gives the artist the ability to let people become a part of their art, experiencing it from within like the artist does upon creation and performance or, just as important, the ability to pull away when appropriate, to isolate them or let them observe from the outside,” he says.

But he also feels that artists are going to have to demand surround from their record companies. “It’s up to the artists to integrate surround into their work and produce interesting enough work that the audience will demand more of this as well. This new expanded palette is here now, so use it, explore it and, most importantly… enjoy it!”
Pro/Video

Ron MacLeod
1. Designing the Surround Sound Experience
2. Easier Than Stereo Mixing
3. Distance Disappears With Portable Drives


MacLeod’s Favorite Gear

The Fat & Crunchy UAD-1
Being a fan of old vintage outboard compressors, MacLeod found the perfect answer for his needs in the Mackie UAD-1 card, which was developed by Universal Audio (UA). “The father of the guys who started UA invented optical compression and the original 1176 — things that we as engineers coveted, these 20-30 year old compressors,” explains MacLeod.

“Their dad actually invented that stuff, so they restarted up the company and are remaking the hardware, but now they’ve developed them as plug-ins as well,” he says. “The UAD-1 is a PCI card that goes in the Mac that has its own massive effects processor, so it doesn’t draw off of your Mac’s processing power.

“It’s made for unconventional uses of the legendary conventional approach. The effects are really good for vocals, guitars and there’s a great guitar amp simulator called Nigel,” says MacLeod. “You can tell it, ‘I want a Marshall 412 cab with an old Vox head.’ There are about 30 different amps that can be morphed together into totally new creations, including stomp box-like effects. Some even have that original old noise! That’s what’s cool — they kind of sputter and hum.”

The UAD-1 card models every variation of UA’s original outboard gear. MacLeod uses the UAD plug-ins for everything — especially on any virtual instruments he uses that are modeled after old analog instruments. “It will squash ’em, and make ’em sound much fatter,” he explains. The VST instruments still sound digital — they’re still lacking noise. So I’ll run audio through the Nigel amp modeler with 2x12s, so it sounds crunchy. I abuse Nigel’s amp simulator a LOT. I love using it on vocals, drums and just about everything. I mean, who needs racks of gear anymore?”