From left: Producer/engineer Bill Szymczyk, moderator Mr. Bonzai and singer/songwriter/guitarist/Eagles member Joe Walsh
Photo: Jesse Grant; courtesy of NAMM
TEC Tracks sessions were introduced at this year’s Winter NAMM Show, where thousands of audio industry professionals gather each year. The sessions were held throughout the day for four days in three different rooms, and featured panel style tracks, roundtable discussions, Q&A segments and musical performances. The entire sound system for the TEC Tracks sessions was designed using QSC TouchMix Series Compact Digital Mixers as well as K Series and KW Series loudspeakers.
“For TEC Tracks, my job was to design the sound systems to ensure that everything sounded great, especially for an event of this kind held for pros in the audio industry,” says audio supervisor Mark Frink. Frink and his team used TouchMix Digital Compact mixers and a pair of KW 122s for each session room. For the large room, they also used a pair of K10s in the back for coverage, and another K10 as a floor monitor for performers.
Among the most notable sessions was a panel moderated by Mr. Bonzai featuring producer/engineer Bill Szymczyk and Joe Walsh of the Eagles in an exploration of the inception and creation of the band’s 1976 album Hotel California. In addition to having to meet the critical listening standards of such audio pros on the panels and in the audience, the challenge for Frink was in designing a system that could be used easily by the convention services staff.
“TouchMix made this whole thing work for us,” Frink says. “As we did not know how skilled each operator would be in each of rooms, I was able to design the sound for each room, spend a little time in each adjusting the EQ, and then it was set. All the operators had to do was turn the channel on and off. TouchMix is a great product because it straddles the genre; it is a pro mixing board good enough for a professional project of any size, and it’s still easy for anyone to use. It is a different product than we have ever seen before in this industry.”
The new sound system for TEC Tracks turned out so well that, according to Frink, “At the end of the show, the convention services company told me that the TEC Tracks worked out so well they felt a need to upgrade their own equipment for the future—and they were, of course, very interested in TouchMix and K Series.”
Find information about QSC TouchMix mixers.
