By Tom Kenny
blog
MixTrips: Tom and Kenny at Cold Spring Tavern
On Saturday, July 11, Chris Pelonis picked me up in Los Olivos in his Porsche convertible and said, “You wanna go get a beer...
blog
MixTrips: Chris Pelonis
Chris has been a longtime friend and I’ve thought from day one that he had one of the great creative/technical minds in our industry.
news
October 2014 Editor’s Note: Every Page an L.A. Story
It’s been 12 years since the AES hosted its annual U.S. convention in Los Angeles, so we decided a few months back to put...
news
September 2014 Editor’s Note: Immersive Sound in All Forms
For the past few months at Mix, we have been completely immersed in Immersive Sound. If you haven’t been out to a high-end, refurbished...
Recording
Giving Back by Helping Kids: Road Recovery, Masque Sound and At-Risk Youth in NYC
One of the all-too-true clichés of the music and entertainment industry is that it is riddled with temptation. Drug use, alcohol consumption and countless...
news
August 2014 Editor’s Note: Talking About People
This month’s cover represents quite a departure for Mix, and it’s pretty striking. Half a face, black and white, no console or room. One...
Recording
Deconstructed: Bob Clearmountain and Chris Lord-Alge
Though they both live in L.A., both at the peak of their craft in the rather small world of professional hitmaking mixers, Bob Clearmountain...
Recording
On the Cover: The Cowboy Rides Away
This month’s cover is a tribute to a man who has lived a most wonderful life in music: George Strait. The Troubador. The King...
news
July 2014 Editor’s Note: Living Among Legends
I have a thing for heroes, and I love a good story. I can read for months and talk for days on the likes...
Recording
Dog & Pony Studios, Las Vegas: From George Carlin to Elliot Smith, Skechers to Slot Machines
If you work in audio post in a mid-level market, chances are you work on a wide, wide, wide variety of projects. John McClain,...
news
June 2014 Editor’s Note: My Kind of Town
It has been a lot of fun talking about Chicago this past month while putting together our Regional pages. The weekly editorial meetings were...
Recording
Columbia College, Chicago
Colleges, especially long-established ones, tend to develop their own cultures. For Columbia College, founded as and Oratory School in 1890 and today a four-year...
news
May 2014 Editor’s Note: A Couple Days in Denmark
I’ve been at Mix for 25 years, and last month I went on my first real junket. I have no moral objection to journalists...
SFP
Sonic Ranch: A Recording Retreat Designed to Inspire
Vibe is one of those versatile descriptors that can mean nothing or everything. It can be used to describe a person, place or thing...
Recording
The Story of the Focusrite Studio Console
Audio engineers today primarily associate the name Focusrite with high-quality audio interfaces and mic preamps, a reliable and musical means of getting audio into...
news
April 2014 Editor’s Note: The Importance of Source
A two-day visit to Sonic Ranch in West Texas, on the dry open lands of the Rio Grande Valley, got me thinking about source....
news
March 2014 Editor’s Note: The Middle Child
While the four mastering engineers pictured on this month’s cover are certainly deserving, each with an extensive and stellar body of work, I admit,...
Recording
Light Rail Studios: SF Music Center With High-End Recording
You can find sound facilities like Light Rail Studios in most major markets, typically in the warehouse district. Affordable lockout rehearsal spaces for local...
news
February 2014 Editor’s Note: Science and Emotion
The best thing about being editor of Mix is that I get to meet such a wide variety of creative, smart, interesting, technical, curious,...
news
John Meyer: A Lifetime of Sound Science
John Meyer is smart. Everyone who meets him comes away with that. And he can talk about an endless variety of subjects, learned and...
Recording
A London Taxi in New York City
It was quite visible at the October 2013 AES convention in New York. Right outside the front door, Karen Brinton parked her newest addition...
Recording
Larrabee Studios: The Best of Old-School/New School, With Style
On a Tuesday night in late 2012, past the 11 o’clock hour, Larrabee Studios in North Hollywood was crazy packed and jumpin’. Jimmy Douglass...
news
January 2014 Editor’s Note: We’re All Lucky to Be Here
Back when my younger daughter Jesse was 11 or 12, she used to love the VH1 nostalgia shows. Behind the Music, I Love the...
news
Professional Audio Design: A Systems Approach to Outfitting the High End
It’s good to check in with Dave Malekpour, founder and president of Professional Audio Design in Boston, every couple of years. He’s an equipment...
news
December 2013 Editor’s Note: Early Adopters
There used to be a relatively simple delineation among creatives who use technology in their daily lives: those who are “early adopters” and those...
Recording
DTS Headphone:X – An 11.1 Experience That Brings the Consumer Into the Mix Room
It’s one of the most impressive demos you will hear. Stellar, dynamic, full-range music. Familiar-yet-somehow-all-new technology. And a Wow! factor that keeps professionals and...
news
November 2013 Editor’s Note: Audio Education Today
It has been a rough couple of years for a lot of people in secondary education, with one headline after another announcing simultaneous class...
Recording
The Blackbird Academy: A New Type of School With an Old-School Mission
Studios have held classes for nearly as long as there have been studios. In a previous generation, studios were the classroom and engineers and...
Recording
Trevor Morris Rising: Music, Tech and a New Santa Monica Facility
Trevor Morris knows and feels music, and always has, from high school days in London, Ontario, that included being commissioned to write a piece...
Live Sound
Dining with Meyer Sound
Since its introduction in late 2006, Meyer Sound’s Constellation system has found a home in high-end performing arts centers, houses of worship, theaters, museums,...
Technology
The Making of a Monitor: An Inside Look at How JBL Developed the M2 and Re-ignited Its Studio Line
A rich and storied legacy, one associated with integrity, quality, reliability and performance, is obviously a good thing to have for any company in...
news
September 2013 Editor’s Note: What’s in a Cover?
This is the second time that Sony PlayStation Studios has appeared on the cover of Mix. The first time was seven years ago, when...
Recording
Nashville Scores! Ocean Way Lets the Game Industry in on Music City’s Best Kept Secret
The first thing anybody in recording talks about when they talk about Nashville is the players. The pickers, the A-list session players, the speed...
news
August 2013 Editor’s Note: Quality–Music Meets Tech
Producer/engineer Andrew Scheps has been logging miles of late, flying around the country to local Recording Academy chapters to deliver a talk in association...
Recording
Cynthia Daniels and MonkMusic: A Versatile Space for a Versatile Producer
Cynthia Daniels talks fast. She answers questions in an elliptical but always focused manner, returning to the core answer at the precise moment you...
Recording
Martin Pilchner: Toronto-Based Designer With International Reach
Martin Pilchner looks like a scientist and an international man of mystery, at the same time. He is equally comfortable with an acoustic guitar...
news
July 2013 Editor’s Note: Cutting-Edge Live
There is a whole lotta action going on in the “live event space,” as marketeers are fond of calling it, I presume because in...
Live Sound
Jason Aldean: Riding the Night Train in 2013
>Jason Aldean puts on a rock ’n’ roll show. The roots are in country, but the approach and delivery is straight-up guitar-bass-drums, with wide...
SFP
Megatrax Revamps, Opens Up L.A. Studios
Megatrax Production Music knows how to get great sounds, tracks that will pop out of the radio, the small screen or the big screen....
Recording
MixTips: Steve Kovacs
Steve Kovacs picked Chicago. An Arizona native and Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (Phoenix) graduate—with further studies in Music Theory and Composition at...
news
May 2013 Editor’s Note: To Phil Ramone, a Toast!
Phil Ramone was special in so many ways. In the days and weeks following his passing on March 30, as the stories and remembrances...
Recording
On the Cover: Ben’s Studio, Nashville
Its official name back when Chet Atkins built it in 1965, in a building owned by Atkins and Owen Bradley, was RCA Victor Nashville...
news
Pro Tools 11 Brings Speed, Power, 64 Bits
Pro Tools HD 11 exclusively offers new metering options that provide a variety of scale and ballistics options. The number “11” carries a certain...
Recording
The Saltmine Studio Oasis
About 30 seconds into a conversation with Don Salter it’s clear that this guy knows old-school—the vintage discrete 36-channel custom Neve with an additional...
Recording
The Big Picture: Dallas Audio Post Opens Dolby Stage
Roy Machado has a good thing going in Dallas. He arrived from Atlanta back in the mid-1980s to study music at the world-renowned University...