U2 played to a packed house at Phoenix’s Cardinal Stadium on October 20th where Conservatory Director of Education Kevin Becka got a behind the scenes tour for a story he wrote for the December issue of Mix Magazine.

Over 250 visitors from sixteen states attended the Conservatory’s open house on October 17th, 2009. Aspiring students toured the Gilbert facility receiving a sneak peek into what a career in the audio industry would entail. They experienced recording and mixing sessions, a Pro Tools demo, an introduction to the Conservatory’s exclusive internship program, and a performance in our live venue by the local band ‘Sinsation’.  Conservatory graduate Evan Samurin from GC Pro came down with representatives from speaker manufacturer KRK who provided a product demonstration of their ERGO Room Correction System which analyzes phase/frequency problems within a listening environment.   It was an exciting day with record attendance. Several lucky attendees even took home microphones, headphones and other prizes they won from the raffle sponsored by CRAS.  Check photos of the event here.

On September 23rd, 2009 The Conservatory’s student Audio Engineering Society (AES) chapter arranged a visit to the anechoic chamber at Arizona State University.  Anechoic chambers are designed to absorb all frequencies across the sound spectrum and are used to test equipment such as speakers and microphones.  Thanks to ASU’s Craig Birtcher for giving CRAS students the opportunity to hear “nothing”.  Click here for photos.

This month two Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (CRAS) instructors headed in different directions to share their knowledge as guest instructors at special training events.

Sound Reinforcement department head Keith Morris headed east to St. Louis to join 6 time TEC award winning live sound engineer Robert Scovill for The Complete Front of House Engineer seminar and workshop.  Keith led attendees through the fundamentals of the industry standard Smaart audio analysis software.

Digital Dept. head Robert Brock headed west to sunny California to deliver a day long immersive training on Apple’s Logic Pro 9.  The event was held in Bob Clearmountain’s private Berkeley Street Studio located within Apogee Electronic’s headquarters in Santa Monica.  Attendees included nearly all of Apogee’s employee’s as well as invited friends of Apogee.

CRAS offers certifications on both Smaart and Logic Pro as part of enrollment in its Master Recording Program II curriculum.

Mike Lewis, vice president of product marketing at Fender joined CRAS for a special recording session in Tempe Studio A on 9/17/2009. Director of education Mike Jones ran the show with the help of CRAS students. So why is a VP at Fender playing a beautiful Gretsch guitar? Simple… Fender markets, produces, and distributes Gretsch guitars. Fender’s international headquarters are located near CRAS allowing the two companies to easily form a mutually benneficial relationship. At CRAS you’ll find all kinds of Fender products on campus including guitars and amplifiers. See photos of the session here.

This high-end system from Australia offers full HD video and hi-res audio production at a fraction of the price of other workstations. It’s based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology currently used in consoles from Digico and Calrec.

Legendary audio engineer Eddie Kramer visited CRAS for an event open to the public on September 3rd 2009.  Eddie was warmly welcomed by a packed house of several hundred people for the Waves sponsored event held in the Conservatory’s live sound room.  Eddie told tales of his work with Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and more and also showed off his signature series of plug-ins with the help of Waves product specialist Michael Pearson-Adams.  Eddie generously allocated much time for Q and A, and graciously stayed late for everyone that wanted their albums, t-shirts and even laptop computers autographed.  This event marks the second time Eddie Kramer has visited CRAS.  View photos from this amazing event here.

On August 19th 2009, CRAS instructor and tech Jeff Harris guided students in building their own reamp box of Jeff’s design.  A reamp box allows recorded instruments such as electric guitars to be re-recorded by directing the output of a recorded audio track back into an instrument amplifier.  Normally the audio output from a recorder outputs a signal that is too high in level.  The reamp box solves this problem by taking the high level output and lowering it to a volume that instrument  amplifiers expect.  At that point the instrument amplifiers can be set to the desired sound and re-recorded with a microphone. To have a little more fun, students used their newly created reamps to feed multiple guitar amps and speakers that were setup on the Convervatory’s live sound stage.  Audio was provided by an Alesis HD-24 hard disk recorder playing back a previously recorded session.  Guitar, bass, drums and vocal tracks were each sent to independent speakers so that students could examine how sound combines in air, as opposed to being mixed with electronics.  See photos from the event here.

CRAS live sound instructor Keith Morris guided students through Roland’s compact yet extremley powerful V-Mixing system during a clinic held August 8th, 2009.  Students were given hands on time with the M-400 mixer as it drove sound through CRAS’s L-Acoustics Kudo line array PA system.  In addition students could acquaint themselves with the brand new M-48 personal monitor mixers just released by Roland. Keith demonstrated how musicians can have instant control over their stage mixes, or how the system can allow the front of house mixer to step in and remotely control an artists mix via a laptop.  To top things off, Keith even showed how the Roland system can accomodate multi-track recording with a laptop running the Sonar digital audio workstation.  All of this is made possible through the use of Roland’s digital audio snake system that uses standard Ethernet networking cable to connect the front of house mix position to the stage.  Photos of the event can be found here.

There’s nothing like spending a lazy Sunday afternoon building your very own optical compressor!  That’s what CRAS students and instructors did under the supervision of Conservatory instructor and grammy award winner Jeff Thomas.  This particular piece of audio deliciousness is inspired by the legendary LA-2A compressor, but with a few of chef Jeff’s own special mods for additional spice.  Ingredients were specially brought in from China, United Kingdom and the good ol’ USA.   Check out photos from the event held on June 28th, 2009.