Daly City, CA — As the highly-anticipated Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival kicks off in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this weekend, much of the live music will be produced and delivered through digital audio solutions from Bay Area audio technology pioneer Digidesign, a part of Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID). In fact, most of the festival’s performers produced their music in the studio using Digidesign® Pro Tools® systems, and all three headliners including Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson, as well as featured performers Beck and Steve Winwood among others, will all deploy Digidesign’s award-winning VENUE live sound systems for their performances at the event.
For more than two decades, Pro Tools has been the revolutionary force behind digital music recording, allowing studios to replace tape-based recording systems with a powerful digital alternative that merges near limitless mixing and editing potential with high-resolution audio. This powerful combination established Pro Tools as the most widely used music recording and mixing software in the world. Many of the performers gracing the stages at the Outside Lands festival this weekend, from eclectic local favorites to chart-topping household names, rely on Pro Tools every day to write, record, and produce their music either at home, or in professional recording studios.
But it’s not just in the studio where Digidesign is driving the music industry forward; this weekend, many Outside Lands attendees will hear how Digidesign is revolutionizing the live sound listening experience as well. All three Outside Lands headliners and many featured performers are using Digidesign VENUE live sound systems to mix the sound during their performances. By combining the power of native plug-in processing (which replaces racks of outboard analog gear) and digital audio quality, with the multi-track recording capabilities of Pro Tools, Digidesign VENUE systems allow artists and live sound engineers to bring many of the same tools that revolutionized the studio to live music.
“VENUE has had a tremendous impact on the way we work,� says Brian Hendry, monitor engineer for classic rockers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “It’s streamlined my workflow, greatly reduced our setup time, and dramatically lessened the amount of equipment we carry. More to the point, it’s improved our sound quality.�
Robert Scovill — Digidesign’s market manager for live sound products and an award-winning live sound engineer who has worked with such bands as Matchbox Twenty, Rush, Prince, and Def Leppard — attributes the VENUE system’s quick acceptance to a changing music industry and evolving customer expectations.
“With the dramatic improvements in the quality of recorded music over the past 20 years, fans have become far more sophisticated, and their listening expectations are considerably higher,� Scovill says. “In addition, Internet-based technologies such as iTunes have created a level of consumer immediacy and a desire, on behalf of artists and management, to capture high-quality live recordings for fast delivery to their eager fans. The VENUE system’s ability to combine live sound mixing with industry-standard recording and production tools such as Pro Tools recording software is enabling engineers and musicians to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of their listeners.�
Indeed, new media specialists Third Wave Productions will rely on Pro Tools technology as they capture and mix high-resolution audio of the Festival’s performances for live webcast on AT&T’s Blue Room website, and again to mixdown multi-track recordings of the performances slated for later use. As Third Wave’s Terry Fryer observes, “it’s only through great advances in audio technology like Pro Tools that it’s now possible to achieve, in real time, a level of sound quality worthy of a live webcast like this one. Digidesign has enabled today’s artists and productions to bring studio-quality sound to live performance, and to the Internet.�
To learn more about Digidesign’s award-winning audio production and live sound technologies visit www.digidesign.com
More information about the Outside Lands festival can be found at www.sfoutsidelands.com
About Digidesign
Digidesign is a worldwide leading manufacturer of digital audio production systems and the winner of the 2001 Technical Grammy® Award and 2003 Oscar® statuette representing the Academy Scientific and Technical Award for the design, development, and implementation of the Pro Tools® digital audio workstation. Digidesign provides the professional music, film, video, multimedia, and radio broadcast industries with tools for digital recording, MIDI sequencing, editing, signal processing, and surround mixing. Digidesign products are marketed in more than 40 countries worldwide through a distribution network of value-added dealers, distributors, and OEM relationships. Digidesign is a part of Avid Technology, Inc. For more information, visit www.digidesign.com.
About Avid Technology, Inc.
Avid (Nasdaq: AVID) is a worldwide leader in tools for film, video, audio, 3D animation, gaming and broadcast professionals – as well as for home audio and video enthusiasts. Avid professional and consumer brands include Avid, Digidesign, M-Audio, Pinnacle Systems, Sibelius, Softimage and Sundance Digital. The vast majority of primetime television shows, feature films, commercials and chart-topping music hits are made using one or more Avid products. Whether used by seasoned professionals or beginning students, Avid’s products and services enable customers to work more efficiently, productively and creatively. Avid received an Oscar statuette representing the 1998 Scientific and Technical Award for the concept, design, and engineering of the Avid® Film Composer® system for motion picture editing. For more information about the company’s Oscar, Grammy and Emmy® award-winning products and services, visit www.avid.com.
