UniqueSquared Pro Audio Blog

Aviom Monitoring System at the Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church

2013-05-14T17:56:26Z

The second video in our series showcasing practical applications of the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System takes us to Decatur, Georgia and the beautiful Greater Travelers Rest Baptist Church. Amandla Lassiter (a.k.a. Dole) is the chief audio engineer for the church and was kind enough to walk us through how he integrates the Aviom system into his work flow. Dole goes over the highlights of this integration in the video above, but it’s worth discussing more specifically how he, and his five piece band, utilize the Aviom system.

Each member of the band has their own Aviom A-16 II Personal Mixer so they can control each individual channel they want to monitor. As Dole notes in the video, the things they want adjusted in terms of EQ are done during sound check. Once that is to the bands liking, it’s just a matter of them mixing themselves in terms of …

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Soundcraft Si Expression Digital Mixer Overview

2013-05-10T18:28:40Z

Digital mixing consoles have been dominating the field of audio engineering for the past few years. More venues have begun implementing them into their live sound applications, and consumers are loving the versatility of being able to take a digital desk from the stage to the studio. What makes these consoles so accessible is not just the ease with which you can perform EQing, level assignments, and FX control, but more importantly their incredible value when compared to the similar designs of yesteryear. The advancement in digital technology has made the existence of racks of FX and dynamics nearly obsolete and these desks are small and lightweight with most of the construction centered around the mic preamps.

Soundcraft has been making live sound and recording consoles since the 1970s and they were one of the first companies to incorporate a live sound mixer into a flight case, which made it perfect for …

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Aviom Monitoring System at the Alliance Theatre

2013-05-14T17:58:57Z

For this video we took a trip to the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, GA. The Woodruff Arts Center is home to the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Alliance Theatre. It’s a beautiful facility located at the cusp of the heart of downtown Atlanta (in case you are ever in the area and looking for great music, art, and theater). For our purposes we visited the Alliance Theatre to take a look at how they have integrated the Aviom Personal Monitor Mixing System into their live sound installations.

The Alliance Theatre was hosting a production of Zorro which included lots of choreographed acrobatics and full use of the theater space. The orchestra members for this production were not placed in the traditional orchestra pit, but were instead lifted onto the right and left sides of the stage with a drummer placed below the stage (for obvious noise …

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Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 MKII Review

2013-04-23T21:36:21Z

Very recently, Taylor found himself trapped in a situation reminiscent of Groundhog Day where I was repeatedly rattling off complaints about my drum situation. Having gone to an entirely hardware synth driven arrangement recording, my drums situation had started to seem like more of a time sink than ever. I had been alternating between using Maschine and some old favorites in a loopmasters sample library for a while, and then gradually got around to beating up the same set of samples from 505, 606, 707, 808, and 909 sample sets for every track. Sometimes I would drop these samples straight into an Ableton timeline, or I would use them in Maschine, Drum Racks or Reason’s Kong, depending on what software combinations I was using for the project.

Lucky Taylor sat through quite a long process of me rambling about why this or that device didn’t work.

While I will swear …

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Numark Mixtrack Pro 2 Review

2013-04-23T16:07:38Z

There’s no denying that Numark are at the forefront of the affordable/entry-level DJ controller market. Their Mixtrack series of controllers sparked many other companies to follow suit with their own designs to reach a mass market. While the Numark Mixtrack Pro 2 may not have all the features and cachet of the more popular, expensive, and professional DJ controllers, it does have a solid build quality, all the functionality you need to hone your craft, and it’s gig ready.

There are some great features on the Numark Mixtrack Pro 2, but there are also some limiting attributes which make it best suited for a particular DJ.

Construction

The overall build quality of the Mixtrack Pro 2 is plastic. The knobs, faders, platters (except for the brushed metal Numark logo), and buttons all have the same hard plastic feel from the first generation Numark Mixtrack Pro. The one exception are the MPC …

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