Steve Miller (left) and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons jamming onstage.
The engineers, sound editors and other talented audio professionals behind Universal’s Walk the Line, Rhino Entertainment’s Cream: Royal Albert Hall and Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat were among the many winners at the 22nd Annual Technical Excellence & Creativity Awards, held Saturday night at the Hilton San Francisco.
In addition to 23 awards for Technical and Creative Achievement, the sell-out crowd saw legendary rocker Steve Miller receive the prestigious Les Paul Award—sponsored by Gibson Guitar Corp.—by virtuoso guitarist Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. Remote recording engineer David Hewitt was inducted into the TEC Awards Hall of Fame by producer/engineers Ed Cherney and Elliot Scheiner. Highlighting the evening was Miller’s return to the stage to perform his platinum hit “Fly Like an Eagle” with Eric Martin, and a blues shuffle with Gibbons, backed by the 2Cold ChileBone TEC Band, led by Larry Batiste.
David Hewitt
The TEC Award for Record Production/Single went to Gorillaz’s “Feel Good, Inc.,” and the Surround Sound Production award went to the engineers and producers of Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms: 20th Anniversary Edition. For the second year running, the production team of Fox’s 24 won the TEC Award for TV Sound Production. Other Creative winners include the live sound crew behind Allison Krauss + Union Station (Tour Sound Production) and the design team of Las Vegas’ Studio at the Palms (Studio Design Project).
In the category of Technical Achievement, the 15 winners included AMS Neve’s 88D (Large Format Console Technology), Digidesign’s D-Command (Small Format Console Technology), Groove Tube’s GT Convertible (Microphone Technology/SR), JBL’s VRX932LA and LSR4300 Series (SR Loudspeaker and Studio Monitor Technology awards, respectively), Yamaha’s M7CL (SR Console Technology), the Waves SSL 4000 Collection (Signal Processing Technology/Software), Shure’s UHF-R (Wireless Technology) and E4 Earphones (Ancillary Equipment), Neumann’s TLM 49 (Microphone Technology/Studio), Digidesign’s Mbox2 (Digital Converter Technology) and Pro Tools 7 (Workstation Technology), AMS Neve 1073 DPD (Mic Preamplifier Technology) and Rupert Neve Portico 5042 (Signal Processing Technology/Hardware).
The TEC Awards wishes to thank lead sponsor Intel Corporation, and the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze Sponsors who made the event possible, as well as Wine Sponsors Cline Cellars and Korbel Champagne Cellars.
For the complete list of 2006 TEC Awards winners, visit www.mixfoundation.org/tec/06winners.html.
