Santa Monica, CA, June 11, 2012 – As a music scoring mixer, recordist and producer since the early 1980s, Alan Meyerson has been well-placed to observe the transition from analog to digital audio production and post-production in the motion picture industry. With the proliferation of digital audio equipment in the studio over the years, Meyerson has turned to Antelope Audio to maintain sample-accurate synchronization among all devices, most recently installing an Isochrone Trinity universal high-definition master clock.
Meyerson has been clocking with one model of Antelope Audio device or another since the company was first established, back in 2005, he says. “I’m very familiar with what clocking does to the audio; that was one of the reasons I switched to Antelope initially. In the system I had, as soon as I put the original Antelope in, it made a tremendous difference. The imaging became much more solid. It was an instantaneous improvement.”
Meyerson, who is based at renowned film and video game score composer Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions studio complex in Santa Monica, CA, has more than 100 film score mixing credits to his name, including the Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers trilogies and the highly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises, which opens this summer. “Hans has two mix rooms and I have one mix room,” says Meyerson, who regularly works with Zimmer, as well as with the independent composers Steve Jablonsky and Henry Jackman.
With the busy summer season coming up fast, Meyerson’s work schedule is currently pretty busy. “Right now I’m working on G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and I just finished Battleship, so I’ve been in action mode. In between the two I squeezed in Oliver Stone’s new movie, Savages,” he reports.
In his mix room at Remote Control, Meyerson’s core system comprises four digital audio components: “I have two Pro Tools rigs, a Cubase rig and a Euphonix System 5 console.” But a recent change in his workflow dictated the need for an upgrade to the Trinity master clock. “I reached the point where I needed to run multiple sample rates,” he explains.
“I decided to take my orchestral recordings up to 96 kHz,” Meyerson elaborates. “My synth masters from the composers I work with arrive with me at 44.1. When I deliver my stems for the dub I have to deliver at 48k. So I’m running three sample rates at the same time, pretty much all the time. The System 5 makes it easier, but I didn’t have a master clock that was handling it. Trinity was able to do that for me very effectively, so I switched.”
The effect that accurate, stable clocking has on a digital audio system can be difficult to grasp without experiencing it first-hand. But Meyerson, an Antelope Audio user for many years, can certainly vouch for just how critical a good master clock can be in any digital audio setup: “When people ask me about converters and sample rates and all that stuff, I tell them, honestly, the thing that I find that makes the biggest difference is the clocking. I can run at 44.1 with a basic converter and if I have everything clocked absolutely perfectly it’s going to sound better than a poorly clocked 96k super-high-end, super-expensive converter. And I’ve proven that time and time again.”
About Antelope Audio
Antelope Audio is the brainchild of Igor Levin who has more than 20-years’ experience and a number of innovations in digital audio and synchronization technology. The company is widely acknowledged as the leading manufacturer of audio master clocks. In 2009 Antelope Audio launched its product line of high-resolution USB D/A converters, being among the pioneers designing a 384 kHz DAC. Antelope’s DACs employ their renowned 64-bit clocking and jitter management technologies and custom-designed circuits, achieving unprecedented precision and sound clarity.
