MONTRÉAL, CANADA – JANUARY 2011: With graduates such as Richard King, Jeff Wolpert and John Sorensen, the McGill University Graduate Program in Sound Recording is among the most prestigious audio engineering programs in the world. In fact, the program only admits seven new students each academic year, all of whom must hold bachelor’s degrees in music. Because the program is part of McGill’s Schulich School of Music, its students have always had numerous opportunities to record top-tier musicians and ensembles from many different genres and backgrounds. Now, they will have countless opportunities to do that recording on one of the highest-quality consoles available – a 64-channel API Vision.
“The Schulich School of Music recently completed a new building,” explained Prof. Wieslaw Woszczyk, who founded the recording program in 1979. “We now have three recording studios, four concert hall recording spaces, an ear-training lab, post-production suites and a multichannel audio
research laboratory. The scoring stage with which we have paired the API Vision is 80′ x 60′ x 50′ and is acoustically stunning. Its control room is the largest in our facility and, when it is not being used as the meeting space for classes, it’s used for internal and external recording projects.”
Woszczyk said he and his colleagues fully studied their options before committing to the Vision. “Professors George Massenburg and Richard King recommended the API Vision initially,” he said. “Everyone agreed it would be good to have a high-end analog front end that was not slave to a particular digital word length and sample rate. The Vision’s unique ability to deliver stereo and surround mixes was very attractive because, in addition to its obvious advantages on a sound stage, many of our Ph.D. students research multichannel delivery systems.”
Several classes use the new API board, including Audio for Video Post-Production, Music for Films, Sound Recording Theory and Practice, as well as Ear Training and Critical Listening. “It is very easy to explain the all-important concept of signal flow using the API Vision,” said Woszczyk. “Students gain a clear idea about how to organize a recording session because everything is clearly laid out. At the same time, the Vision embodies the ‘API sound’ that is one of the professional benchmarks in the industry.”
ABOUT API Established more than 40 years ago, Automated Processes Inc. is the leader in analog recording gear, with the Vision, Legacy Series and 1608 recording consoles, as well as its classic line of modular signal processing equipment. More information at www.apiaudio.com
PHOTO CAPTION Richard King, multiple Grammy award-winning recording engineer and professor at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music sits in front of the 64-channel API Vision console recently installed in the school’s control room.
