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REVIEW 46<br />
KYMA PACARANA<br />
REVIEW 38<br />
UNIVERSAL AUDIO UAD-2<br />
FEATURE 34<br />
MONKEY PUZZLE HOUSE<br />
RUSHES 60<br />
NEUMANN KMS104 PLUS<br />
leader<br />
AUDIO MEDIA MAY <strong>2009</strong><br />
Scalability in business is an obvious thing, but does produce<br />
some odd consequences. In essence, if a manufacturer<br />
can make four times as many widgets with only twice the<br />
number of staff, it has scaled well. It could then encourage<br />
more growth by cutting the cost of each widget still be making more money<br />
than be<strong>for</strong>e. And so it goes on.<br />
This is the reason why automation and efficiencies in manufacturing<br />
have had such a massive influence over the years – and why history<br />
teachers get so wibbly over industrial revolutions. It's scalability that has<br />
made it possible <strong>for</strong> Apple and Microsoft, <strong>for</strong> instance, to pour squillions of<br />
man-hours into development, yet still sell their fantastically sophisticated<br />
products <strong>for</strong> less than a decent mic pre.<br />
Some of the consumer resentment over the cost of something like a CD<br />
may well have had something to do with a blinkered view of scalability. When<br />
record companies were selling buckets of them and could have brought the<br />
price down, they didn't. iTunes, however, did... in a 'we hope people don't know<br />
their 99p times-table' kind of way. Piracy is not good – I think I've covered that<br />
a few times be<strong>for</strong>e – but in the context of perceived corporate greed, the rise<br />
of the internet as a distribution channel, and the strange notion that if it's not<br />
attached to hardware it's not as valuable; you can almost see seller arrogance<br />
as an incitement to copy. But that's a whole other discussion.<br />
In studio land, un<strong>for</strong>tunately, opportunity <strong>for</strong> significant scalability is the one<br />
thing we lack. You can bring in high-tech workflows and efficiencies, but like the<br />
old automatic car joke, you still have to be there. It basically comes down to time,<br />
and its infuriatingly linear nature, which puts studio rates into a very direct and<br />
proportional relationship with the studio's health. Sandwiched between the<br />
artist and the distributor, studios generally gain nothing from scale, because of<br />
the absence of a stake in the means and rewards of distribution.<br />
However, amongst the towering virtual megaliths that are currently<br />
monopolising the virtual world in a way that doesn't sit incredibly well with<br />
their democratising and socially-networked wallpaper, there is opportunity.<br />
Think scalability, think 'virtually free' distribution, and realise that even very<br />
thick, de-coupled, concrete walls cannot prevent a studio seeking mechanisms<br />
to 'scale-up' – mechanisms that that don't have to be confined to real-estate,<br />
and don't have to be based on an hourly rate.<br />
Paul Mac, Editor<br />
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