LOS ANGELES – Ian Charbonneau is the owner of The Recording Project, a company that specializes in completing high quality recordings and mixing of live musical performances. He has included DirectOut’s PRODIGY.MC in his ultra-portable Fly Pack recording system.
More details from DirectOut (www.directout.eu):
DirectOut is a creator of industry standard audio devices. Renowned for its clean sound, the PRODIGY.MC is utilized by Ian Charbonneau in his ultra-portable Fly Pack recording system.
Passion is at the core of Ian’s being. He lives and breathes music and since a young age has been involved in the creation of some exceptional records. His Fly-Pack is a natural next step for him and with DirectOut on his side, he feels that there is nothing he cannot achieve.
“I grew up following my dad on Le Mobile remote recording studio. Since I was five years old, recording live music on location fascinated me and still does today. I’ve known for a long time that I don’t want to build an audio truck because of the responsibility and very high costs of owning a large vehicle today. There’s a lot more commitment than simply focusing on recording music!”
Ian’s father is Guy Charbonneau, a pioneering sound engineer who has been recording legendary albums and soundtracks for 50 years with his rolling studio ‘Le Mobile’. Although he shares his father’s passion for music, things have changed greatly in the recording business, especially with budgets and technology. Ian always knew that making a modern truck in the style of ‘Le Mobile’ would be very difficult to sustain, due to the limited requirement for such extensive infrastructure in the modern music industry. With so much advanced technology available, Ian was looking for a way to bring the focus back on recording and capturing great sound. When he was introduced to DirectOut products, he knew he had found the tool that would unlock an idea that had been developing for some time.
“When I saw DirectOut announce the PRODIGY.MC, I knew that this was something I had to have. It was a great opportunity to build something simple and on point,” Ian recalls. “I could finally build a recording Fly-Pack that was high quality, high channel count, flexible, but that could also actually ‘fly’! How cool is that?! My design was totally on purpose and not just a bunch of audio gear plugged into each other to achieve one overly complicated system at the end. So, during the pandemic, I decided to make a leap and place an order, this was my solution.”
The PRODIGY.MC is a multi-format high-end audio converter designed to suit a range of applications with its modular design. For Ian Charbonneau, this was a fully loaded analog and MADI setup that gives him 64 channels of mic HD preamps inputs that he can control with globcon and feed into his Pro Tools rigs via a MADI Fiber connection.
With such a giant legacy to live up to, Ian had reservations. His fear was that his compact system would only lead to recording smaller projects and that would make monetizing his investment difficult. A great relationship with the team at DirectOut and his confidence in their products ensured a successful outcome.
“Having worked with DO [DirectOut] and their previous ANDIAMO products for many years, I knew I was getting a solid workhorse with high end mic preamps and converters with the PRODIGY.MC,” Ian explains. “I was a little bit afraid not to have the large-scale recording projects I had been doing with Le Mobile, but it’s been nothing but the contrary. In the last couple years, I was able to capture some very special projects where the quality of the recording really was put in the forefront. I found my purpose with my Fly-Pack system, bringing all my experience of recording live shows through the last 30 years.”
Ian Charbonneau is the owner of ‘The Recording Project’, a company that specializes in completing high quality recordings and mixing of live musical performances. Charbonneau has recorded many great projects with his PRODIGY.MC powered Fly Pack system. Since 2023, recording projects for Imagine Dragons, Maná, Melissa Etheridge, Neil Young, Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, Macklemore, and most recently Laufey Live at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic IMAX film, the recently released triple live album of Steve Vai, Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani G3 Reunion Tour, Cyndi Lauper Farewell Tour and Sheléa with the Pacific Symphony PBS Special.
“My Fly-Pack allows me to really focus back on capturing great sounds and the music with a very simple and efficient system” he says. “I have the freedom to capture music the best way with confidence and transparency and that’s my goal. Achieving something like the projects my PRODIGY.MC allowed me to do thus far to follow my journey of recording music and capture special moments has been my dream since I was a kid. It is just a continuation of that and DirectOut made it possible. Without the PRODIGY.MC, I would never have been able to make such an efficient Fly-Pack ‘Fly’ and have these amazing experiences.”
The first Fly-Pack with Le Mobile was made 20 years ago and weighed 3500lb or 1583Kg, requiring a truck to move it. In comparison, his new version weighs just 450lb (200kg), and can be shipped with him on a scheduled flight, anywhere in the world.
“It is the only high-end recording fly pack, to my knowledge, that can actually fly commercially,” he explains. “It is contained within 5 cases, the PRODIGY.MC & preamps, two MADI Pro Tools for redundancy and two utility cases containing everything I might need – audience mics, hardware, fiber, and even offer an optional ATMOS mic package for immersive projects. I adapt the contents per project and advance what I need on site. I’m hoping to grow my current system to 128 channels with the addition of a second PRODIGY.MC within the next year.”
Ian appreciates the simplicity of DirectOut and feels that without the unique products it offers, he would not have been able to create such a streamlined and musically accurate system for recording.
“I want to do things that translate the feel and emotion the music carries; my goal is to capture that and share it with people” he concludes. “This is what DirectOut enables me to do. The last two years have been pretty incredible, and that has been down to DirectOut, it really has!”
For more information on The Recording Project, go to www.therecordingproject.com
