Recording Sat, November 22, 2008

With 500 credits for music scoring mixer spanning nearly 50 years, veteran sound engineer Dan Wallin was a natural choice to record Michael Giacchino’s epic score for “Speed Racer” (Warner Brothers), the latest film to advance the trailblazing style and technique of the Wachowski Brothers (“The Matrix Trilogy,” “V for Vendetta”). Wallin and Giacchino have worked together on many previous projects, including “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “Mission Impossible 3,” and the “Lost” television series. Wallin is celebrated for capturing some of the most faithful, realistic recordings in the business, the credit for which he humbly shares with a vast collection of Neumann and Sennheiser microphones. Four TEC Award-winning Neumann TLM 49 large-diaphragm condensers recently joined their siblings on the scoring stage for “Speed Racer” and inched Wallin that much closer to his sonic vision of a perfectly transparent recording.

Wallin got his start in the early 1960s with Warner Brothers and immediately prompted them to expand their collection of Neumann and Sennheiser microphones with several of the legendary U 67s and the very first Sennheisers designed for orchestral recording – the Sennheiser 405s – which he reports are all still in active use. From there, he went independent and purchased eighteen Neumann TLM 170s from The Record Plant. Why so many? “For me, the TLM 170 is the basic tool that any engineer needs to properly record an orchestra,” Wallin replied. “You can record anything on a TLM 170 and it sounds fantastic, and the headroom is phenomenal. Transients sail through perfectly.” Because Wallin mics each orchestral section separately, his large collection of TLM 170s immediately gave him the high-end, transparent sound that was fast becoming his “invisible” signature.

No dogmatist, Wallin keeps his ears open to new sounds and was impressed by the Neumann TLM 49 while recording “Lost” at Capitol. “Like the other mics in the TLM Series, the 49s have no transformer and thus no phase shift,” he said. “As a result, they have a wide open sound that is absolutely truthful and accurate. Tim Moore, Sennheiser’s artist relations manager, had met Wallin’s friend and assistant Michael Aarvold at a NAMM show, and provided the TLM 49s for Wallin.

With two drum kits, two guitars, an electric bass, six percussionists, and an 80-piece orchestra, Giacchino’s ambitious score demanded all of Wallin’s tricks and tools. Two of the TLM 49s covered the cellos, while the other two covered the string basses. Eight Sennheiser MKH 40s captured the double-woodwind section. Six Neumann TLM 170s captured the violins and violas. Additional TLM 170s served the percussionists, the pianist, the brass section, the guitars, and one of the drum kit overheads. TLM 193s filled in for the other drum kit’s overheads, while both snares and hats benefited from Neumann KM 140 small-diaphragm condensers.

Like the Neumann TLM 49s, Wallin recently happened upon the Sennheiser MKH 800 Series studio condenser, which boasts a flat frequency response out to 50kHz. “I had to have them!” he laughed. “They have an amazingly rich, open sound.” He used three MKH 800s for a spaced LCR in front of the “Speed Racer” ensemble and two MKH 800s in an M/S configuration in the front. In addition, one more MKH 800 captured the crystalline beauty of the harp.

All of the mics went through Wallin’s coveted collection of Precision Analog class A preamps before conversion to 24-bit, 96kHz digital. While Wallin thinks 24/96 brings digital technology close to the fidelity of high-end analog tape, he was disappointed to have to use it on “Speed Racer.” Recent projects such as “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” went to tape, but the industry has just passed a significant juncture. Wallin was unable to obtain tape for “Speed Racer!” Nevertheless, the veteran engineer is excited about the new one-bit technologies, which he finds superior even to analog, and looks forward to the day when they are more widely available and flexible.

When asked to comment on the titanic shifts in sound recording technology that have taken place over the course of his career, Wallin points to one advent as the most critical. “While many sound engineers seek to impart a ‘sound’ to their recordings, I have always tried to make the orchestra sound as realistic as possible. I’ve used all the vintage mics, even when they weren’t so vintage, but Neumann’s transformerless technology was what really changed things for me,” he says. “The accuracy of their transformerless designs gives me the musical transparency that I find so appealing in a good orchestral recording.”

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