Engineer and Author Dave Hampton and his wife Lisa recently visited the Conservatory as guest lecturers. CRAS students Bryce Meehan and Desiree Garcia interviewed the Hamptons asking questions about their careers in audio and what its like to work as an audio pro in Los Angeles.

 

 Dave and Lisa Hampton Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the many mics in the Conservatory’s locker, the Holophone is a specialty surround mic that also has numerous stereo applications.

The Sound Recording and Reproduction Wiki offers a wealth of information about the history of and procedures for recording sound.

CRAS Instructor Michel Henein wears many hats. Besides being a Digital Department instructor, he also has his own game company with a title in development (Diesel Games), and he writes features for Mix Magazine. His latest work in the February 2008 issue of Mix chronicles the audio production behind Call of Duty (CoD). Michel interiewed the audio engineers and sound designers who recorded 14 weapons perspectives for each shot, spent 170 hours recording voice overs, referenced 10,000 unique sound effects and created 750,000 individual sound parameters for the game.

CRAS grad Clay Barlow from the 8/3/2007 graduating class has rocketed to the top of his new job in Game Audio. He is part of the team at WaveGroup Sound in Fremont California who has produced the audio for a string of wildly successful game titles including Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero: Rock the 80’s. The studio is featured in the February 2008 issue, and cover of Mix magazine and Clay is pictured on page 50. “Clay had a perfect GPA and attendance over the 8 months he was here and was motivated from day one,” says Director of Education Kevin Becka. “It’s no wonder he’s done well in his new career. Students like Clay make our jobs something special, we wish him the all the best of luck.”

photo caption: clockwise, Jon Hanson (Empirical Labs), Brenton Trotter (Stash Picks), Afton Hefley (Goblynz Groove Media), Eric Boyer (Presonus) and Ben Widmer (TC Electronic)

The recent annual Winter NAMM show in Anaheim California displayed the latest gear in music and audio to over 88,000 registrants. The show is a magnet for musical celebrities, manufacturers, musicians, recording engineers, producers and more. Conservatory staff visited the show and ran into a bevy of grads working the show for a variety of manufacturers.

Check out this great video chronicling a very special session where the Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick records And Your Bird Can Sing with the Fab Faux.

There are a lot of cool changes in the curriculum and studios at the Conservatory for 2008

Universal Audio puts a lot of effort into quality software emulations. The Neve 33609 Bus Compressor is a UAD plug-in based on a legacy piece of hardware used on a lot of record productions. It was originally designed by Geoff Tanner at Neve in the 70’s (before it became AMS Neve) and is based on the 2254 compressor. This unit and the SSL bus compressor are two of the best examples of products in this category.