Recording - August 2017 - 12

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Companies like
Ableton and
Yamaha were
giving product
demonstrations
in their tents.

forward
Legendary engineer Al Schmitt was
interviewed by Sweetwater's Mitch
Gallagher, one of many seminars,
interviews, and tutorial sessions
offered at GearFest.

Seminars, Concerts, and
Gear Galore at Sweetwater
GearFest 2017
Sweetwater GearFest continues to grow by
leaps and bounds. This year's event, on June
23-24, had over 14,000 attendees, up 2,000
from last year, and was packed full of interviews,
seminars, workshops, studio tours (Sweetwater
Sound HQ in Fort Wayne, IN, has several beautiful
onsite studios), and lectures and demonstrations
by industry representatives and famed musicians.
Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, Steve Stevens, Terry
Bozzio, and Dweezil Zappa were just some of the
featured talents. There was even a pop-up factory
where Moog engineers were building and testing
analog delay pedals for sale at the event.
While that was going on inside Sweetwater
HQ, the parking lot was home to a gigantic tent
sale, with hundreds of manufacturers showing
their coolest gear. We got to see lots of products
that were or will be reviewed in our pages, from
beautiful AEA ribbon mics to the new DPA d:vice
remote recording interface, from Grace Design's
new BiX preamp to gigantic arrays of guitar effects from makers large and small, and all kinds of
beautiful instruments on display.
The Pro Audio 1 Tent (there were three) was by
far the largest at GearFest, and was packed wall
to wall with cool toys. We saw interfaces from
Antelope Audio, Audient, Steinberg, Roland,
and MOTU, rack processors from Manley Labs,
Bettermaker, Electrodyne, BAE, Fredenstein, and
LaChapell Audio, handy studio tools from Cloud
Microphones, Dynamount, and more mics and
monitors than we could possibly name here.
We were hitting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram hard all weekend, and the photos are
available there for you to look at, but here's a
selection of some of the great stuff we saw. We'll
definitely be back at Sweetwater next June for
GearFest 2018!
We'd like to thank founder/CEO Chuck Surack and everyone at GearFest for their hospitality, particularly Doug Strahm, Christopher Guerin, and Mitch Gallagher.

RECORDING August 2017

Eric Johnson was one
of many famed players
at GearFest (Robben
Ford, Terry Bozzio, and
Dweezil Zappa were
on hand as well). That's
Sweetwater founder
Chuck Surack on sax in
the background.

Technical Editor Paul
Vnuk Jr. checks out the
beyerdynamic DT 1990
PRO headphones.

Some companies choose to
premiere products at GearFest.
This year, new launches
included the Coleman Audio
CA500EQ dual-channel equalizer and the Roland SE-02
tabletop analog synthesizer.

Mics were everywhere at
GearFest, with offerings
from AKG, Audio-Technica,
Audix, Earthworks, Shure,
Telefunken, and other
well-known names, as
well as new arrivals like
the Townsend Sphere L22
modeling mic and the
Warm Audio WA-14.

The Aston Starlight's a beautiful
mic... just don't look into the laser!
(Review on page 32)

Studio tools abound, with new digital mixers from Allen & Heath, Apogee's
line of interfaces, the new Grace Design m900 headphone amp (review
coming soon), Mackie's new Big Knob monitor controllers, great gear
from Auratone, A-Designs, and Tube-Tech (among many other TransAudio
Group brands), and studio solutions and acoustical treatment products
from Radial Engineering/Primacoustic.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017