Aes Ponders Impact Of Low-cost Recordings

The 115th Audio Engineering Society Convention portrayed an industry in flux.

While the digital audio workstation (DAW) that has come to dominate professional recording continues to bring new possibilities to music production through limitless track counts, high resolution and software-enabled manipulation of sound, it has also fundamentally changed business models that have existed for decades.

The DAW, led by Digidesign's Pro Tools platform, enables very high-quality recording at an extremely low cost. One result has been a widespread migration from the traditional commercial recording studio to smaller home or personal studios.

But as demonstrated at the 115th AES here, every aspect of audio recording has felt technology's impact, from equipment manufacturers and retailers to recording engineers and producers to artists and consumers.

One telling example came with the Oct. 10 announcement that starting next month, musical instrument (MI) retailer Guitar Center will be an authorized reseller of Apple Computer's entire product line, coinciding with the opening of Guitar Center's first Manhattan store.

"We're the biggest Digidesign dealer in the world," Guitar Center executive VP David Angress says. "Over the last three years, [Digidesign] has developed less expensive product that has much lower price points but has file compatibility. So a musician or producer can be working in a very inexpensive, home computer-based Pro Tools environment tonight and transfer those tracks to the professional session tomorrow.

"We got to a point where the time was right for all concerned," Angress says. "The recording market is firmly computer-based at this point. [Apple's] customers and ours are running music- and video- editing applications on those computers day in, day out, and they need to integrate at the dealer level."

Similarly, New York-based Apple reseller and service provider Tekserve, also exhibiting at AES, provides Pro Tools and other products for audio professionals.

Concurrent with the vanishing distinction between professional and project studio recording, MI manufacturers are developing pro audio gear, just as pro audio products are increasingly sold by MI retailers.

Electro Harmonix, long favored by guitarists for its line of "stomp box" effects, such as the Q-Tron envelope filter and Big Muff distortion pedal, exhibited the new NY-2A stereo optical compressor, a rackmounted unit designed for recording-studio environments.

Renowned guitar manufacturer Gibson, meanwhile, also exhibited at AES, showing its Indestructible line of amplifiers for sound reinforcement applications.

Representatives from Gibson, which will debut products from its new audio division in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, also explained the manufacturer's MaGIC (Media-accelerated Global Information Carrier) technology, an Ethernet-based network for linking media appliances, with applications in the recording, post-production and home markets.

Manufacturers of large-format equipment have simultaneously developed smaller, less expensive products, some of them software-based emulations of their hardware (see Studio Monitor, page 50).

This convergence of professional and project recording equipment and the recording and MI categories has considerably widened the base of those creating audio content and providing commercial audio recording services. While the DAW has allowed new creative possibilities and a faster workflow at ever-falling costs, however, it has also given rise to a generation of recordists of varying experience and skill.

"Knowing how to put a DAW in 'record' does not make you an audio engineer," said convention chairperson Zoë Thrall of New York studio the Hit Factory during the opening ceremonies. Promising a future of "great promise and unpredictability," she asked, "Will technology replace the hard-earned skills of engineers?"

Manifestations of the far-reaching availability of inexpensive digital recording equipment were described at the Platinum Engineers panel of Oct. 12. Engineers Mick Guzauski, Nathaniel Kunkel, Jack Joseph Puig and Angela Piva lamented poor-quality DAW recordings they are sometimes hired to mix. Recordings made by an inexperienced engineer—or even a band member—do not serve the music industry, they warned.

The contradictions presented by technology's ability to lift artistry to new heights while simultaneously giving rise to a flood of recordings by the inexperienced and untalented was best expressed by producer Arif Mardin during his keynote address.

"The repercussions of technology, especially as affordable as it has become, cannot be isolated," said Mardin, revered producer of artists including Aretha Franklin, the Bee Gees and Norah Jones.

"Yes, it makes our day-to-day in the studio easier," he said. "Yes, we can create never-before-heard effects. But we can also take the non-talent, the beautiful non-singer, and give them a career where one could never have existed. This effect of technology on popular music and on a future generation of music makers cannot be ignored."

The convention, held Oct. 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, drew some 400 exhibitors and 15,000 attendees.