Martin Walker is one of those "go to" guys when you are looking for someone who understands what a real rock band is supposed to sound like. That list ranges from Whitesnake to Mastodon to more than 10 years with Judas Priest.
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Dreams and divas, music and madmen, cirque and sensuality – this is Teatro ZinZanni. Originating in Seattle by Pacific Northwest nonprofit arts and events producer One Reel in 1998, Teatro ZinZanni is now also set along San Francisco's historic waterfront on Pier 29 at the Embarcadero.
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In the studio world, everyone faces the same challenge of referencing. All of us have spent God-knows how many hours tweaking and EQing to get our mix to sound the best it possibly can. Then you finally burn the masterpiece to a CD and put it in the car to hear it and, lo and behold, your face is melted with 4k. Or you have a wonderful 120Hz roar. What happened? Your wonderful studio monitors, that's what.
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This is kind of like reviewing a tailor-made suit – I may love it but it may not fit you at all. Or vice-versa. But there has been a lot of talk and interest out there, so I am going to give this a go.
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From Huey Lewis to a birthday party for a one year old; from a wedding featuring a rock legend to a 2,000-person corporate party; from a six-stage music festival to celebrating the world champion San Francisco Giants – Sound on Stage has been through it all, and then some.
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Back in the late 1970s, I was doing semi-permanent house sound at a club in Cleveland, OH. They were pretty eclectic in what they presented, with a few days a month being dedicated to punk. With all the bands that were boiling out of nearby Akron, we got a lot that went on to national level. Well, one night we were headlining the Dead Boys.
Read More »Jane Kaczmarek, the actress, said, "Awards shows are my greatest inducement to get back into shape." Awards shows are as much about looking good as doing well in the estimation of your peers, but they also are a reflection of the industries they celebrate. So it was meaningful when, last January, the TEC Awards program, which had been a fixture at the AES Show since its inception 26 years ago, moved instead to the Winter NAMM Show.
Read More »About a month ago, I worked on a show in a ballroom that measured about 300 feet by 200 feet. The mix position was placed at the back of the room. Our system was fairly large and included an AVID Venue digital console with a digital snake, which was a beautiful thing, considering that the length of the snake tapped out at over 400 feet.
Read More »In January, I went to the Winter NAMM show, and I was very impressed with what I heard and saw. There were a lot of new products that seemed to be more methodically designed. What I mean is, more thought as to what the end users' needs and purposes are. It seemed like research and development had improved, and the quality of construction seemed better.
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Everyone I know is a production manager and, most likely, if you are reading this column, you're a production manager as well. Apparently it is a prerequisite for anyone in our line of work to have a business card that not only announces a technical bent but also alerts the world to the fact that the bearer of the card is also a production manager.
Read More »Owsley "Bear" Stanley, longtime sound engineer for The Grateful Dead, died from injuries sustained in an auto accident March 13 in Canberra, Australia. He was 76. Known as an early developer of LSD and also for the creation of the Grateful Dead's dancing bear icons, Stanley is also credited with audio innovations including the "Wall of Sound" used at Grateful Dead concerts in 1974, a precursor to line arrays.
Read More »SALT LAKE CITY – The AVnu Alliance held an AVB plugfest recently at Harman Professional's Signal Processing Group in Salt Lake City. Harman and five other manufactures participated in the plugfest, giving engineers from the different companies a hands-on opportunity to test connectivity, interoperability and interfaces.
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