Recording - December 2012 - 48

PreSonuSphere2012
RocksBatonRouge—Again!
Special report by Mike Metlay
Ray Williams. Multiple bands graced the various stages throughout the event, creating live tracks on the spot that were then used in the seminars. In addition, the Josef Sternberg Conference Room was packed full for a series of intimate lectures/training sessions on everything from learning to spot and cure hums and buzzes in your studio (courtesy of Recording contributor Mike Rivers) to a rundown of Nimbit, the new music marketing/sales/outreach website recently purchased by PreSonus and whose features are now tightly integrated with Studio One. And of great interest to many attendees, the upstairs Gallery had been converted into a hands-on teaching lab with ten fully equipped workstations and lecturers Justin Spence and Byron Gaither guiding small groups of students through the basics of the StudioLive consoles and the Studio One DAW. There was something for everyone in the conference program. The local band Papa Grows Funk gave a performance in the Main Theatre at the Shaw Center right after the opening party, and the FOH engineer caught the performance direct from the venue’s StudioLive board into the Capture live-tracking software; the next day, the audience got to watch and listen to the raw tracks being cleaned up and mixed. There were sneak peeks not only at the new Smaart integration with StudioLive consoles—imagine seeing a live spectral display of your audio overlaid on a graphic equalizer, so you can instantly see which bands to pull down!— but at new features coming soon in the Studio One 2.5 update. Veteran mixer John Mills discussed the use of eq and compression in live mixes, and walked users through sound check procedures. Famed acoustician and studio designer John Storyk took attendees on a whirlwind tour of million-dollar studios but explained basic room-improvement principles that could be applied

Last year I was privileged to be one of the members of the music-tech press invited to attend the inaugural PreSonuSphere at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (see my show report in our March 2012 issue). This year, PreSonuSphere grew in a number of ways, and I spent a whirlwind two days trying to see and do everything at once. Among the bigger numbers when compared to last year’s event: about 400 participants vs. last year’s 200; five different spaces for seminars and workshops compared to last year’s two; two full days of events with very few repeats vs. last year’s one... and quite significantly, while last year was a PreSonus-only shindig, this year saw the arrival of other firms to reach out to PreSonuSphere attendees. Rational Acoustics was on hand to demo the integration of its Smaart room analysis system with PreSonus’s StudioLive mixers and software, and product expert Steve Savanyu of Audio-Technica led seminars on everything from drum miking to what goes into a wireless miking setup. The only thing that wasn’t bigger this year was the wheelbarrow-sized pot of homemade jambalaya served at the event’s kickoff party... and it ran out, prompting requests for two pots next year. Fortunately, there was enough crawfish étouffée to feed an army at the closing festivities, where attendees toasted new knowledge and new friendships made over the two-day event. (Make no mistake, PreSonuSphere has a good thing going with this “include amazing food and lots of great live music as part of the seminar program” concept!) The bulk of the seminars and demonstrations were in last year’s two spaces. The Hartley/Vey Studio Theatre was set up with a full stage of music equipment and a mixer with video mirroring so audiences could watch presenters like top touring engineer Ace Baker (Chickenfoot, Aretha Franklin and many more) track and mix live musicians right on the spot, and the Hartley/Vey Workshop Theatre was a presentation space where large crowds could follow demonstrations of Studio One and Melodyne features as presented by Grammy®-nominated engineer Fab Dupont and Celemony’s
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RECORDING December 2012
Recording - December 2012

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