Outlaw Sound: the ultimate survivor: this studio offers a mix of ISDN and audio post work - Audio Today & Tomorrow

Post, Nov, 2003 by David John Farinella

HOLLYWOOD -- Allan Roth, Outlaw Sound's owner, laughs a bit when asked how his company has survived the past 20 years through some of the industry's toughest times. "Sometimes I wonder myself," he admits. "It's like any company that's been around awhile--it's what we've done to satisfy our clients and give them good products. We're reliable and we make our clients' job as easy as possible."

Along with that track record, Roth points to Outlaw's (www.outlawsound.com) many contacts at studios throughout the country that specialize in spot work. "We've established a long-term relationship with many of these studios because we do a lot of ISDN voiceover transmissions out of Hollywood," he explains. "So, we often find ourselves being the studio down the hall--two thousand miles or so down the hall--where we have the talent here and we transmit the audio to another studio and they'll end up [staying to do] the post. We've kind of found a niche in the ISDN business some years ago and have focused in that direction."

That move into providing ISDN and ADR services came as Roth saw an opportunity about 13 years ago when companies slowed their forays into Hollywood. "They started taking audio out over satellites and then this wonderful thing called ISDN came to be," he says. "We batted it about and I thought it was a good way to go. In the beginning there were only six studios in the state of California that had an APT box, and there were 60 in the United States, so we got into that business on the ground floor and established a clientele way back when. At that particular point when that end of the business started to grow, we started doing less and less of the audio post work. We do our fair share of it, but the bulk of our business is audio ISDN transmission worldwide."

Outlaw has provided ISDN services for clients such as Isuzu, Cub Food Stores, United Airlines, Corona Beer, Wal-Mart and Best Buy. The company recently completed ADR work for a film starring Jason Priestly called Sleep Murder. Those sessions required a video lock between Outlaw in Hollywood and Manta Digital in Toronto.

THE GEAR

Technology-wise Outlaw's two rooms feature Digidesign Pro Tools 5.11 running on Mac G4s that are outfitted with a Fuse 001 video capture card and an additional 80GB FireWire external hard drive. Outlaw uses a pair of APT-X Milano boxes and a Telos Zephyr box that's compatible with CCS, Musicam and Comrex Layer 1 and 2. "We have an APT box dedicated to each one of the rooms, so we don't have to worry about conflicts on one APT box," Roth reports, "We've got a Digidesign Universal Slave Driver with our ISDN box through APT, so we can lock timecode between locations. We do that on a fairly regular basis between Toronto and here where we'll be sending the audio back to Toronto in sync to picture. We'll have picture here, they'll have picture there and we can lock over the ISDN lines and send inaudible timecode down channel one audio, which is kind of a cool feature."

Both of Outlaw's rooms feature analog consoles--a Sony 618 and a Trident--to get some warmth in the all digital sessions. Of the Sony board, Roth says, "It's a wonderful analog sound, and the better we can get that audio sounding before it goes digital the better," Roth says. "It's the kind of console that is modular and you can pop a strip out and hot-rod the pre's and do lots of wonderful things." While all of the capacitors in the Sony board have been swapped out, Roth says the stock Sony pre's are used for all of the ISDN feeds.

The Outlaw complement of microphones includes Sennheiser, Neumann and Shure. When it comes to ISDN dates, Roth will not use any type of compression. "We try to give [our clients] the shortest route between the microphone and the codec box," he says, "so on their end when they get into whatever they are doing in post, they can add whatever they want," If the session is going to be posted at Outlaw, Roth might throw a dbx 166 compressor on, but he'll rarely use any EQ since the odds are the tracks will end up digital. "When it ends up at a radio or TV station there are a lot of things going on there and if you overdo compression, especially in high definition work, it seems like it can be a problem," he explains. "We try to limit that to a great degree, unless it's for a special effect or something."

While Roth is satisfied with where Out law is as far as technology, he is looking to purchase retools software to better organize their sound effects library. Roth is also looking into the possibility of adding video conferencing capabilities so clients and talent can visually interact during ISDN or ADR sessions.

Additionally, Outlaw is looking to expand its studio space because Roth is optimistic about the future of the company.

"We continue to add new clients, and the business continues to grow. Our clients seem to be getting busier as well and, bless their hearts, when they get busy they keep us busy," he says. "I think overall, in my business and my clients, things are looking pretty good."