Here we are in 2016, and we are just a matter of weeks before an important milestone in audio history — the invention of the practical condenser microphone. While names like Edison bring up images of celebrated inventors, the name of Edward Charles (E.C.) Wente, who played a major role in developing the direction of professional audio, is almost completely unknown — even in his own industry.
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I’ve been around for a while (a good while) and thought I had seen and heard everything, particularly in the area of microphones, where it seems every possible idea or new product concept has already been tried or taken. So earlier this year, when I heard that MXL microphones was launching a new guitar amp mic, my initial reaction was a resounding “Meh!” You see, I already have just about every conceivable transducer that could be used to capture guitar amps.
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Okay, I’m back! Please accept my apologies for being absent from last month’s issue of FRONT of HOUSE, but I do have a legitimate excuse. At the end of August, I underwent a much-needed surgical procedure on my left shoulder, and I just recently regained the ability to type with both hands. I have now been liberated from the bulky, intrusive sling apparatus that has imprisoned my left arm and dominated my life for the last four weeks.
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Be afraid, be very afraid, but don’t despair: The world will get scarier — you just need to get the right costume.
t’ll be Halloween in a couple of weeks, so it’s time to toss a little scare out there. During a deep dive into the changing production-rehearsal studio market recently, I learned that the average size of rehearsal rooms is getting bigger.
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Let’s do a little math. (I know, you hate math.) But do it anyway. Let’s suppose a 32-channel digital mixing console has a retail price of $15,000. And let’s say that this mixing desk has 16 outputs. That yields a total of 48 I/O channels, each of which requires a certain amount of audio circuitry. Granted, most of the audio processing happens in the digital domain, so we’re not exactly in need of 48 hardware parametric EQs, but we certainly do need 48 amplifiers plus A/D and D/A conversion. That comes to around $312 per channel.
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The first time I heard the term “virtual sound check,” I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. In fact, the idea of using pre-recorded multi-tracks as sound check material goes way back. I’ve been playing back multi-track audio as a teaching tool for well over a decade, before I even heard the term “virtual sound check.” I have no idea who came up with this or who tried it first, but certainly it has been around for quite some time, going back to the days when brave souls toured with racks of Alesis ADATs and Tascam DA-88 tape drives.
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I have a confession to make. Like many other folks in the business of audio, I am a recovering gearaholic. While having a compulsion for collecting equipment may sound somewhat innocuous compared to other forms of addiction, I can honestly stand before you and say that the habit is real and the consequences of said craving can be severe and debilitating.
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