WHITE PLAINS, NY – December 14, 2011 - Music education content provider In Tune Partners today launched the premiere issue of Woofer, a multimedia publication about the music industry for musicians, music industry executives and knowledgeable fans. Woofer takes full advantage of its digital format, offering over 100 pages of content infused with audio clips, video examples, and animations. The publication is available for viewing exclusively on iPads and computers. The issue carries a cost of $2.99 and can be purchased at woofermag.com or via the app store.

Woofer’s distribution model is as unique as its content. It’s being marketed primarily by a dozen “affiliates;” companies who have agreed to promote the publication to their 3.5 million constituents via social media, e-mail, and other customer communications. Affiliates will offer these constituents a $1.00 discount coupon code. Participating affiliates are ASCAP, Broadjam.com, D’Addario & Co., Disc Makers, DW Drums, The Epiphone Guitar Company, Guitar Center’s Harmony Central, Ibanez, iStandard.com, Nimbit, Notion Music, and PickTheBand.com.

Woofer is intended to help musicians, those working in the music industries, and fans address the latest challenges and opportunities in the music business. It highlights events, recommends music and musical acts, comments on music-lifestyle issues, and profiles music creation and business issues, in addition to drawing together insights and information provided by experienced journalists, top artists, educators and others working in the field. Some launch issue features include:

– “Under Deconstruction” in which One Republic’s studio engineer diagrams how one of the band’s new tracks was produced, and a video-based story called “Play My Song,” in which singer/songwriter Mat Kearney demonstrates how he performs his latest hit.

– “DIY or Die,” a column in which one emerging jazz artist helps another self-release a debut album.

– “The Barking Dog,” an at-large rant by Jeffrey Rabhan, Chair of New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at the Tisch School of the Arts, about Justin Timberlake’s MySpace investment.

– “I Want To Be A Musician,” a comic video by Lev Yilmaz, and a short fiction piece by Anne Isaaks.

The premiere issue’s cover story discusses the recent wave of band and artist comebacks and how legacy acts are working to stay relevant in a new and changing music environment.

Woofer’s editorial team is headed by Mike Levine (Electronic Musician) Emile Menasché (In Tune Monthly), and Mac Randall (Music Alive!, Teaching Music) and its business team is headed by In Tune Partners CEO Irwin Kornfeld (Billboard Music Group), and In Tune V.P., Publisher Angelo Biasi (United Entertainment Media).

Woofer will begin monthly frequency in March of 2012 and add affiliates, doubling the publication’s promotional outreach. Annual subscriptions will be offered for the base price of $29.95.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 2011: It was a unique confluence of events in late October that led to a mind-expanding technical tour for participants of the annual AES conference in New York City. Veteran classical music engineer and educator Bill Siegmund of Digital Island Studios, LLC, organized the “Live Organ Recital Recording” tour, a rather grey title for an event that ended up lively and colorful. The recording took place at New York’s famed St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. Well known as ‘the jazz church,’ St. Peter’s current sanctuary resides below the Citigroup Building and was constructed with an ear for music. Celebrated organist Walter Hilse played the church’s massive Klais manual tracker organ, and Siegmund recorded it with the help of his trusty Metric Halo interfaces. The event allowed participants to reflect not just on the mechanics of mic placement and remote monitoring, but also on the philosophical underpinnings of recording and the place of recorded music in today’s technological zeitgeist.

Although Siegmund was excited to encourage experimentation regarding many aspects of the session, the core of his rig was, after years of development, set. He placed a Metric Halo ULN-8 and an LIO-8 (outfitted with mic pres) on stage, minimizing delicate mic-level cable runs. The Metric Halo boxes provided high-end preamplification and AD conversion. The digital outputs fed an RME MADI converter for the long run downstairs to the makeshift control room where DA conversion was handled by another LIO-8. There, a MacBook and a surround sound ensemble of Neumann KH 120 monitors paired with a Genelec 7070A subwoofer allowed all participants to travel back and forth between the hall and the control room for an “is it live, or is it Memorex?” experience.

Siegmund originally converted, so to speak, to Metric Halo converters in 2005 with a 2882+DSP. “The flexibility, compactness, and sound of the 2882 is what drew me to Metric Halo originally,” he said. “And when they introduced the 2D card I added one in 2009. But as I came to appreciate a few of the 2882′s limitations, I petitioned Metric Halo for an updated box that would overcome them. Quite independently, they introduced the ULN-8 just weeks later. Although I’ve never been an early adopter, the ULN-8 was like a dream come true. I purchased mine two days later, taking advantage of the deal Metric Halo extended to existing users. And when it arrived, my new ULN-8 came straight out of the box and with me to Nashville to record Schnittke violin sonatas for Naxos with classical producer and fellow MH user Jamey Lamar.”

“Now I use my ULN-8, together with the sibling LIO-8 (with mic pres), on every date. They’re road warriors! I appreciate the fact that each unit packs eight channels of fantastic preamplification, conversion, DSP, routing, and mixing into just one rack space. With all their mic gain, my ribbons never break a sweat, and my Schoeps, DPA, Neumann and Sennheiser condensers work to their full potential. Moreover, I can adjust gain and routing from a remote control room. I was able to sell my Rosetta 800 and eight channels of John Hardy M-1s, shaving valuable pounds from my remote recording rigs.”

He also cites the ability to pre-configure sessions via Metric Halo software – away from the stress of the actual event – as a great contributor to more effective workflow. “In May 2010, WFMT in Chicago hired us to do the first live radio broadcast from the newly renovated Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. We had mics for performers onstage, our two radio hosts, and their guests, set up in the stage left wing and we set up a control room in the back of the house. The ULN-8 was onstage, one of my 2882s was in the wing, and another 2882 was in the control room (I hadn’t gotten my LIO-8 yet). We didn’t know how many guests we were going to have nor when they would appear. And ISDN transmission lines out of the hall were only installed on the afternoon of the show! But with MIO Console I was able to set-up a mixer in advance, one with enough flexibility and room for expansion to accommodate the inevitable “oh, by the way” changes at the venue. The broadcast went to air flawlessly.”

Meanwhile, back at St. Peter’s, Siegmund began with a mic setup that he has used successfully there before. A pair of DPA 4006 TLs (with acoustical pressure equalizers to form an M 50-like polar pattern) together with an M-S pair of Schoeps MK 41 and MK 8, formed a Decca tree for the principle pickup. A pair of Schoeps MK 21s in an NOS-array was pointed away from the organ and used for surround pickup. “To produce the final mix, I use the surround mics to feed a reverb unit,” he explained. “It’s a wonderfully diffuse input.” The tree plus surrounds were about thirty-five feet off the floor on a custom mic stand. And since this was also an AES tech tour, Siegmund added three alternate stereo pick-ups for comparison. A pair of Neumann Solution D digital mics hung fifteen feet up. Sennheiser MKH-800s were used in a Blumlein array. Lastly, and most curiously, he used the room’s catwalk to suspend a spaced pair of Schoeps MK 2H omnis sixty feet off the floor.

“One of the students asked the very reasonable question, why are we putting mics in places where no human ears ever go?” recalled Siegmund. “Resident cantor and organist Thomas Schmidt beat me to the answer. He pointed out that, for instance, you can go to Carnegie Hall, sit in the back row, and still have a wonderful musical experience. But if you stuck mics there, you’d never be hired again! The information content and context of recorded music is quite different from the live experience, and the recording technique demands a different approach. As recording engineers, it’s our responsibility to keep a listener engaged when the visual and visceral elements of a live performance are not present. It turns out that an organ recording will often convey the excitement of the live experience with the mics high up off the floor.”

Very special thanks for a successful AES Technical Tour go to Allen Rowand and Jon Stern of Metric Halo, Chris Spahr of Sennheiser USA, Duke Markos of Duke Markos Audio, and AES Convention Chairman Jim Anderson.

ABOUT METRIC HALO Based in New York’s Hudson Valley, Metric Halo provides the world with high-resolution metering, analysis, recording and processing solutions with award-winning software and future-proof hardware. www.mhlabs.com

Elon, NC – December 2011… With its five schools and colleges, including the College of Arts and Sciences, Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, School of Communications, School of Education, and School of Law, Elon University is ranked by the U.S. News & World Report as the second best Regional University in the South. Among the various facilities on campus, Whitley Auditorium is home to a wide range of activities. This multipurpose space serves as a venue for lectures, concerts, performances, weekly chapel services and is home to a Casavant pipe organ. After struggling with an inadequate sound reinforcement system for quite some time, University officials decided the time had come to correct the situation—and this decision led to the installation of a new loudspeaker system drawn from the Variant Series catalog of Valencia, Spain-based D.A.S. Audio. more

Seminal Producer and Songwriter Sets up Dangerous Music Rigs for Worldwide Use

EDMESTON, NY – December 13, 2011 – Some producers follow artists to their home towns or favorite recording studios. Seminal R&B and hip-hop producer/songwriter Teddy Riley has seen it all during his illustrious career and now finds himself in the middle of a whole new wave of styling in Korea with “K Pop” – a unique variety of music emerging from South Korea. Having produced some music that zoomed up the Korean music charts, he decided to go there and set up a production company. However, his secret weapon in creating beats and mixing and monitoring had to part of the equation: Dangerous Music 2-Bus LT analog summing for mixing and the Dangerous Monitor ST for monitor control and source switching. When in Korea, he set up just such a recording system. And for the 2011 Blackstreet concert tour Riley added the Dangerous Music D-Box compact 1U rackspace integrated 8-channel summing and monitor control to his portable setup so he can keep working on productions and have his ‘sound’ while traveling. more

New console to be flagship facility for advanced degree program

GUILDFORD, UK – The Academy of Contemporary Music, a three-building complex located in Guildford, UK with satellite academies in the United States, South Africa and Italy, has purchased a 24-channel Solid State Logic Duality SE console for its advanced degree program.

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New Versions of Industrywide Favorites for Time Code and Clocking Solutions

Brainstorm Electronics, the world leader in time code and clocking solutions, has introduced two new versions of its industrywide favorites for time code and clocking solutions.

Brainstorm SR-112

Brainstorm’s new SR-112 Time Code Distripalyzer, replaces the industry standard SR-15+. It is a time code reader, distributor, reshaper, analyzer and generator all in a 1U rack mount device. The analyzer indicates format, frame rate, errors and video phase and outputs a comprehensive report; the 1×12 distributor reshapes the signal; the optional generator repairs drop-outs and generates new code. All SMPTE and EBU SD/HD rates are supported. Ethernet is included for reporting and to set parameters and update firmware.

Brainstorm DCD-12

The new single domain DCD-12 Word Clock Distributor/Generator is an excellent companion for the popular DCD-8 and includes the same exceptional jitter rejection. The DCD-12 can run as a master generator on internal crystal or locked to an external reference such as WC, Video Sync (HD & SD), AES31, S/PDIF, 10 MHz (GPS or Rubidium clock). The rate of the reference (input) is “learned” by the DCD-12 automatically while the output rate can be identical or set independently. Ethernet is included to monitor and set parameters and update firmware.

About Brainstorm
Brainstorm products deliver complete solutions for all sync requirements in the post- production, recording and broadcast environments. Designed for operations ranging from audio recording studios to large post-production houses and major broadcast facilities or remotes, Brainstorm offers the most comprehensive package for all clocking needs, providing versatility in the widest range of applications.

For more info about Brainstorm, visit distributor plus24:
http://www.plus24.net or phone 323.845.1171

Prism Sound is delighted to announce the release of the latest version of its SADiE 6 software. In addition to various enhancements, SADiE users can now use their SADiE 6 editing software on any computer, anywhere in the world, thanks to the dongle-based security that gives users the ultimate in flexibility. SADiE 6.0.2 supports dongle operations, and the dongles themselves are now shipping.

Full details of the enhancements and the benefits they brig are available on the SADiE website – www.sadie.com – and are also included with each installation.

“The new release software adds a number of advantages, particularly to editors with new functions in the trim editor that speed up workflow by allowing adjacent clips selection and pairing of clips,” says Prism Sound and SADiE’s Broadcast Consultant Pete Nash. “Stability with certain Windows issues have now been resolved and the dongle support is particularly useful to customers who are using SADiE 6 for location recording, or in organisations where the software is more likely to move from computer to computer.”

Dongles are now shipping and customers who would like one should contact SADiE so that they can be helped with their installation.

The launch of SADiE 6 software marks another step in the evolution of the high-quality audio recording and production system in the computer environment, allowing a choice between proprietary audio I/O and DSP processing, or standard soundcard I/O and DSP functions running on the host computer.

The new version of SADiE 6 is available for download from the company’s website.

2011 has been a busy year for SADiE, and many interesting developments including the rolling out of the SADiE 6 to the BBC in Manchester. The company has also launched an accreditation scheme for training establishments to ensure that future broadcast engineers receive the very best training in this ground breaking craft editing technology.

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About Prism Sound
Founded in 1987, Prism Sound manufacture high-quality professional digital audio equipment for the International broadcast, film, music production, manufacturing and telecommunications sectors. The range now includes SADiE digital audio workstations and location recorders. Prism Sound also manufactures audio test and measurement products such as the DSA-1 and the dScope Series III audio analyzer.

For more information please visit www.sadie.com or www.prismsound.com

The Music Producers Guild (UK) today announced the shortlist for its 2012 Awards, which will take place at the Café De Paris, London, on February 16th 2012.

As an annual highlight on the music industry’s calendar, the Music Producers Guild Awards recognises the enormous contribution made by recording professionals to the success of the UK’s music industry.

The winner of the Music Producers Guild’s Producer of the Year Award also receives a BRIT Award for Best Producer, and both awards will be presented at the Music Producers Guild’s Awards ceremony.

MPG Chairman Steve Levine says: “An MPG Award is highly coveted by recording professionals because it represents an endorsement by your peers. Whilst anyone can nominate, only full members of the MPG are allowed to vote for the shortlist and therefore the results are relevant to the creative value of our industry. To win an MPG Award shows that you recognised to be at the top of your game as a recording professional.”

The shortlists for each category (in no particular order) are as follows:

• Producer of the Year, sponsored by The BPI BRITS 2012:
Paul Epworth
Flood
Ethan Johns

• Recording Engineer of the Year, sponsored by Prism Sound:
Dan Austin
Haydn Bendall
Geoff Foster

• Mix Engineer of the Year, sponsored by Solid State Logic:
Dave Bascombe
Tom Elmhirst
Mark ‘Spike’ Stent

• Mastering Engineer of the Year:
John Dent
Mandy Parnell
Ray Staff

• Live Production of the Year, sponsored by Shure:
Jools Holland TV Series
Radiohead – Live in Praha
The Who – Live at Leeds/Hull

• UK Album of the Year 2011, sponsored by Universal Audio:
Adele – 21
Everything, Everything – Man Alive
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

• UK Single of the Year 2011:
Adele – Rolling In The Deep
Noah & The Whale – l.i.f.e.g.o.e.s.o.n
Anna Calvi – Desire

• Re-mixer of the Year, sponsored by Novation:
James Rutledge
Jamie XX
Starsmith (Finlay Dow-Smith)

• Breakthrough Producer of the Year, sponsored by Deep Recording Studios:
Stevan Krakovic
James Rutledge
Yogi

• Breakthrough Engineer of the Year, sponsored by Genelec:
George Apsion
Tom Morris
Lee Slater

• International Producer of the Year, sponsored by British Grove Studios:
T-Bone Burnett
Dimitri Tikpovoi
Butch Vig

• International Recording Engineer of the Year, sponsored by Focusrite:
Andrew Scheps
Jonathan Shakhovskoy
Craig Silvey

The Outstanding Contribution to UK Music Award, sponsored by PPL, will be presented to Beggars Group founder Martin Mills, while the recipient of the Joe Meek Legacy Award, sponsored by Joe Meek, will be announced at the Awards ceremony in February.

Voting for the Best Studio Award has been changed this year so that members’ voted will decide the winner, therefore voting will continue until January 2012.

The final award for Unsung Hero will be voted for by the readers of Pro Sound News Europe – the Music Producers Guild’s media partner for this event. The winners in all categories will be announced at the Awards ceremony.

Tickets for the Music Producers Guild Awards are now on sale, so book early to avoid disappointment – last year’s event was a complete sell out. To reserve your ticket, please telephone Karen Poree at Bubble & Squeak. +44 (0) 01442 877 850. Email: karen@bubblesqueak.co.uk.

There are also a number of sponsorship opportunities available and anyone interested should contact Sadie Groom on sadie@bubblesqueak.co.uk

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About Music Producers Guild (UK):

The Music Producers Guild was conceived and is supported by producers and engineers who are passionate about all aspects of making and recording music. It is a not for profit company and is run by volunteers from the membership. Formed as a Guild rather than a Trade Association, MPG has no party political agenda, but does represent the professional recording community to Government and actively engages with other music industry organisations, to develop a dialogue about and exert an influence on matters of mutual interest and benefit to its members and its industry. The achievements of this creative community are celebrated each year through the MPG Awards event. www.mpg.org.uk