Friday, January 6, 2017

LIRS Update - NEW GEAR MONTH!

Happy late New Year my audio friends! I hope 2017 is good for you so far. As for us, some big things are happening here at LIRS! First, it’s new gear month! We are doing some serious upgrades to our main control room to move into an even more world class phase of the business. The main addition to our arsenal is the Audient 8024HE console. If you haven’t heard of Audient before, go on YouTube and check ‘em out. In my career I’ve worked on SSL, Trident, API, and Sony boards, and I can truly say that the 8024 is a beast! Like most majors in the industry, we have decided to go back to analog for the mix even though we are still tracking in Pro Tools. With a 144 point patchbay, we can route anything to anywhere on the board. Which comes in handy with the other new additions - TWO UA1176’s, TWO Emperical Labs Distressors, and the mighty LA-2A! Combined with the two 500 series DBX 560A compressors, we have some seriously pro quality compression going on. This will definitely keep us “out of the box” and allow us to get some nice compression as we record the tracks instead of just relying on plug-ins to compress after the fact. No more nasty spikes in the audio to trick our mix compressors into hitting too hard!

On the digital side of things, we have upgraded our HD rig to Pro Tools 12 and are now using Aurora Lynx A/D converters to get our signal in and out of the Audient console. The Sony DMX-R100 that used to be in Control A has been moved to the soundstage building and we now can offer 24 track Pro Tools HD live recording services as well! If your band or vocal group wants to do a live video recording, give us a call and we can definitely fulfill your needs!

On the personnel front, we have added Grammy nominated producer Keith Caudill to our team. He has been working to bring the school (LSRA) up to the next level in audio education as well as lending his well trained ear to sessions with local and national artists that have been coming thru our doors.

Over the Christmas break we tracked 6 songs for the debut release of country artist Ryne Brashear. Ryne’s “band” for the session was brought in straight from the studios of Nashville and included Keith’s son, Kory Caudill, on keys (also a Grammy nominee and member of Justin Moore’s backup band). The band was smokin’, and we tracked all the music in one marathon session. Needless to say, there was a lot of great country music happening that day! Ryne sang all the final vocals over a couple of days and we are getting ready to enter the mix stage of the project. I have no doubt you’ll be hearing more about Ryne Brashear in the near future.

The Recording School is starting back next week and I have several students advancing to my area of the course, Studio Recording. They will be the first students to get to use the new console, and I have heard from a few students that have already completed this phase saying that they want to retake just to get some time on the Audient!

That’s all I’ve got for ya right now. Stay tuned for more updates and musings from me and my adventures at LIRS! Don't forget that you are welcome to stop by and tour our facilities anytime. Just give us a call at 859-335-8440 (if you're local) or TOLL FREE at 877-335-8440 to set it up, so we can give you the ultimate LIRCo experience. See ya next time!!!

Steve Nall
Main Engineer, LIRS