Buzz : Mbox

Avid and Abbey Road Studios Team Up to Uncover the Music Industry’s Hidden Talent

Sara Griggs — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Santana wrote about it (“I’m wiiiining!) and so did Nicki Minaj (“I came to win…”). What will it sound like when it happens to you?

For the last 25 years, Abbey Road Studios has contributed award-winning products to the music industry. In celebration of this milestone, today at NAMM, Avid and Abbey Road Studios announced the launch of a global talent competition. Aspiring artists, musicians and producers will have their songs heard, mixed and mastered by the industry’s top producers and engineers.

Starting today through March 13, musicians around the world will be able to upload one original song of their choice to be judged by music industry veterans and fans online during the week-long voting period that ends March 21. Industry judges include Grammy-winning producer, mixer and songwriter Greg Wells (Adele, Katy Perry); musician, producer and A&R representative John Feldmann (Goldfinger, Good Charlotte); and Grammy-winning producer Tricky Stewart (Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Rihanna).

The judges will choose their three favorite songs, and the winning artists will have their single mixed and mastered by Abbey Road’s Online Mixing & Mastering Services, and will receive a full Pro Tools|HD Native recording system from Avid. The winner of the fans choice award will receive an Avid Mbox® audio interface with Pro Tools 10 software.

“The hardest thing for an aspiring musician is to get their songs heard by the right people,” said Greg Wells, competition judge and multiple Grammy-nominated producer, mixer and songwriter. “This competition is the perfect way for artists to get their music out there and I’m really looking forward to listening to an eclectic mix of songs.”

Avid and Abbey Road Studios have long shared a passion for the creation of music, and are excited to team up to give aspiring musicians the chance to reach a global audience and showcase their work to three of the most respected figures in the industry.

Avid, Berklee School of Music and the John Lennon Bus celebrate with the Tipitina's Foundation at "Instruments A Comin'" 2012

Mark Williams — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:53:00 GMT

Image Courtesy of the Tipitina's Foundation

Avid, the Berklee School of Music and the John Lennon Bus were all on hand to celebrate and educate at Tipitina’s “Instruments A Comin’” fund-raising event in New Orleans on Monday, April 30th. The event was held at Tipitina’s uptown New Orleans music venue on the first night of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and featured incredible performances by some of New Orleans most famous hometown heroes including Galactic, Trombone Shorty, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and the legendary Neville Brothers that kept the crowd on their feet till the wee hours.

The Tipitina's Foundation’s “Instruments A Comin’” annual benefit concert, silent auction, cultural fair, and block party was established eleven years ago to raise money for local student musicians, and has provided more than $2 million worth of musical instruments to date, assisting more than 70 school marching bands and after-school music programs, benefitting thousands of young musicians.

Avid and the Berklee School of music marked the occasion with a donation of recording, composition, and music creation equipment to the Tipitina’s Internship Program. Under the artistic direction of Donald Harrison Jr. the Tipitina's Internship program is an after-school jazz performance and digital recording program for ages 12 through 19. Now in its eighth year, the program is part of the Berklee City Network and focuses on instrumental performance, music theory, recording and general academic tutoring, and creates positive change in the lives of young New Orleans musicians.

“Avid is thrilled to support the Tipitina's Foundation and its partner, the Berklee City Music Network. Both are deeply committed to bringing music to the children of New Orleans and with their efforts are making a big impact,” said Lee Whitmore, Ed.D., Avid Director, Segment Marketing. “We’re so excited to mark this incredible "Instruments a Comin'" event with the donation of a complete Pro Tools recording system including Artist Series controllers, an M-Audio keyboard and a copy of Sibelius 7. I can't wait to come back to hear the amazing music students will create and record."

Berklee City Music is a nonprofit education program that harnesses the energy of contemporary music to reach underserved 4th to 12th graders all across the country. Students dedicate themselves to building their musical talent, their self-confidence and, in the long run, the strength of their community.

“Berklee is proud to support initiatives by our City Music Network member Tipitina's Foundation who are grooming the next generation of musicians, innovators and leaders,” added David Mash. Senior Vice President for Innovation, Strategy, and Technology, Berklee College of Music.. “Tipitina's commitment to enriching the New Orleans community will have a lasting effect on the teachers and students of tomorrow. Berklee is pleased to continue to leverage our relationships with strong partners like Avid, who is a pioneer in providing solutions for music creation and production, and by working together on projects such as these, we can truly make a positive impact on the lives of children.“

“I must say that Avid's support of the Tipitina's Foundation will help us preserve New Orleans' irreplaceable music community,” concluded Kim Katner, Managing Director, Tipitina’s Foundation. “The equipment and software fill a large need the Internship Program has for audio production tools, and it represents a wonderful investment in the music, culture and people of New Orleans.”

And wherever there are kids, music, and good times, be sure to keep an eye out for the John Lennon Tour Bus – and as fortune would have it the Bus was able to join in the festivities at “instruments a Comin’”. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility. In its fifteenth year, with the very newest technology and gear, the Bus continues to be dedicated to providing young people with tours of the studios and participation in free songwriting and multimedia production workshops. The Bus offered tours during the event, and also made several stops in New Orleans, including working with the O. Perry High School jazz band “The Chosen Ones,. With sousaphones, trombones, trumpets and southern soaked vocals, the students had a great time writing and recording an original tune on the bus and learning about the power of Pro Tools. Check out the great video of the stop below.

Mix Magazine: "40" takes Pro Tools HD Native mobile with Drake's "Take Care"

Mark Williams — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:18:00 GMT

Executive producer Noah “40” Shebib has worked with Drake since the artist’s debut. Photo: Future the Prince

Everyone has heard of Drake’s latest album Take Care by now – it rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 when it debuted and took front stage at the MTV Awards. Not many people, however, have heard how producer Noah “40” Shebib made it all happen. Lucky for us, Mix Magazine got a chance to sit down with 40 and they just published an incredible interview in their January issue detailing just how far Pro Tools HD Native has enabled him to push the limits of professional HD recording.

Relying on a custom Pro Tools HD Native rig, 40 moved seamlessly from hotel room to recording studio while on tour with Drake, recording tracks in the moment and turning them into chart-topping hits in between shows and appearances. "When I’m on the road with Drake, I have a little rackmount on wheels that has an Omni HD interface in it and a Neve 1073 strip and a one-unit Magma chassis with a Native card," said 40. "'I plug this into my laptop wherever I go. This rig is pretty serious business when you’re in a hotel room.”   

The article also points to the importance of portability for today’s producer. “We have a plethora of interfaces, including a family of every Mbox five times over, tons of laptops – it’s grab a computer, grab an interface, plug in a mic and get going." Shebib explained that with his set of tools he can to walk into sessions with guest artists and record straight to his mobile rig, head back to his hotel room, and easily create and mix the recordings on his laptop. And of course if the guest artist can make it to cut the track in person, they can just e-mail 40 their take and he can fly it right into his Pro Tools HD session.

 What’s the key to producing a crowd pleasing hip-hop album? As far as Shebib is concerned, it’s don’t waste any time. Inspiration happens, and you've got to be ready to capture it and move at the speed of the artist's creativity. “One thing that you need to be is extremely fast on Pro Tools because the caliber of artist that Drake is, he doesn’t have the patience for wasting time. If he wants you to fly eight bars and put a chorus after that, he expects it done near-instantaneously.” 

40 is one of a hand full of producers pushing the boudries of professional music production with Pro Tools, and just for the record, I think I seriously covet his mobile rig. Just saying. Check out the whole article here and find out more about how Pro Tools HD Native is revolutionizing HD recording here.

Avid Mbox and the John Lennon Bus on the 2011 Warped Tour

Mark Williams — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:42:00 GMT

Over the summer the Lennon Bus traversed the country (multiple times!) traveling with the Vans Warped Tour, engaging with the bands and helping bring the Bus' message of music education to the incredible community of Warped artists and fans. After the folks on the bus noticed how many of the artists on tour had incorporated Avid's Mbox into their portable recording set-ups, they asked a few of the headliners to come on board and talk about how they make music on the road. Check out this amazing video featuring interviews with Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel, Middle Class Rut's Sean Stockham and Terrible Things and hear what they have to say about songwriting, recording on the road, and the gear they turn to get the job done.

"When you're in an apartment with a kitchen and a living room and an Mbox and two mics, it forces you to be really be creative," says Stockham. "And that's what I love about it. I like the idea of capturing a moment. And that's the biggest thing that mobile recording and Pro Tools… they let you capture the moment right then."

"For me having a portable studio setup is integral to survival and to working. That's what you do, you're a musician, you've got to always be writing and always coming up with new ideas and having a way to capture them easily is crucial," Gobel continues. "It seems like Pro Tools is the industry standard - [in] every studio that I've ever gone in to with any engineer or producer that's always the format it's been. I want to know the industry standard."

Check out the video on the John Lennon Bus YouTube page, and keep an eye on Avid Buzz for more updates from the John Lennon Bus on the road.

High School Students Talk Pro Tools at Seventh Annual GRAMMY Camp®

Mark Williams — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Producer Mike Elizondo and recording artists Nick Jonas and Greyson Chance speak at the 2011 GRAMMY Camp in Los Angeles

At this year’s seventh annual GRAMMY Camp®—the GRAMMY Foundation’s signature music industry camp for high school students—Avid had the chance to catch up with students participating in the audio engineering and electronic music production courses. Campers Giovanni Quattrochi and Kyleel Rolle weighed in on their use of Pro Tools, and how the DAW enables them to mix and record new projects. “We’re working with Pro Tools 9 and it’s been an awesome experience, as we get to collaborate with other teens who love music,” said Rolle. “I’ve always known Pro Tools is the standard professional program used in big-time studios, and having the chance to learn the same software that pros work with has been great.”

GRAMMY Camp students (left to right) Giovanni Quattrochi and Kyleel Rolle

During the camp’s Guest Professional Day, GRAMMY®-winning and –nominated professionals taught in classrooms— which are outfitted with Pro Tools 9, Axiom keyboards and Mbox interfaces— and spoke about their personal experiences, as well as best practices for landing a job in the music industry. “Stay true to your music and keep an open mind to all opportunities that come your way,” said multi-platinum Producer Mike Elizondo. “You might not know where your songs will go when you first get started on a project, but stay creative and always be proud of your final track,” added Artist Nick Jonas.

Based on our experiences at GRAMMY Camp, it’s become clear to us that the future of the music industry is no doubt on the right track. Interested in attending GRAMMY Camp 2012 or know a high school student who might be? Applications for can be accessed at grammyintheschools.com.

Keyboard Magazine Honors Mbox Pro With KeyBuy Award

Mark Williams — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:21:00 GMT

In their July issue, Keyboard Magazine took an in-depth look at the Mbox Pro and found quite a bit to rave about. So much so that they saw fit to award the Mbox Pro their prestigious KeyBuy Award!

Keyboard Magazine awards their KeyBuy designation to products that offer best-in-class performance and truly unexpected value. "This one took me by surprise," writes reviewer Craig Anderton. "It’s not an overstatement to say I was shocked by the quality of the new Mbox Pro and the line overall."

Anderton took a good hard look at the units construction, features, and most importantly its technical performance specs."If you care about specs," writes Anderton, "they’re extremely impressive, with audible results. Low-frequency response rolls off by less than 0.5dB at 5Hz—that’s serious low end—and even at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, response is essentially flat up to 20kHz, after which it falls off a cliff . There are no noise components above –120dB, and most sit around –130dB. That’s seriously quiet. As to distortion, all I could find was a second harmonic distortion component at –110dB, and a third harmonic at a hair over –100dB. Short version: These specs are audiophile-quality and very few interfaces meet them."

Thanks so much to the editors at Keyboard Magazine. You can read the Mbox Pro review here.

Harmony Central Puts the Mbox Pro to the Test in Ongoing Pro Review

Mark Williams — Wed, 18 May 2011 09:54:00 GMT

Harmony Central editor-in-chief Craig Anderton has been giving the Mbox Pro a serious look in his HC Pro Review, and the recent test measurments he posted are so good we wanted to share them with you.

If you're not familiar with Harmony Central's Pro Reviews, they combine Craig's vast professional expertise with a unique forum style format to deliver a truly interactive product review. Over the course of several weeks, Craig will post detailed product images, sound samples and test results along with his professional opinions, while moderating a larger discussion revolving around his posts that users and even the product's designers participate in. This interactive review format provides an opportunity to dive far deeper into the details that a normal, static review format would allow, and gives Craig the opportunity to focus on the specific features his readers are most interested in hearing more about.

As part of Craig's Mbox Pro Pro Review, he tested the performance of the unit's converters and signal path using Rightmark's RMAA6 software and he recently posted the results online. His independent measurements confirm what we've been saying all along - the Mbox Pro features best-in-class performance. And now Craig posted the graphs to prove it.

"I gotta say - the test results/specs are impressive, as in, extremely impressive. No wonder Avid wasn't the least bit concerned when I said "we're really going to put this through the microscope, you know."

Intermodulation: "The Intermodulation Distortion is particularly dramatic, as in, "where is it?!?" Yes, there's you 60Hz and 7kHz tones, which should in theory produce intermodulation distortion products, but I'm really not seeing much of anything except a teeny distortion product at 180Hz and another at 240Hz - and nothing for all practical purposes at the high end. Either I really, really need new glasses, or the Avid engineers did their job."

Total Harmonic Distortion (THD): "Now for THD vs. level. With digital systems, distortion increases as levels decrease because you have less resolution. The following shows that at -6dB. THD is well under -84dB, and at -15dB, THD remains under -72dB - more extremely respectable specs."

Noise Level: "And again, we have another outstanding spec: There are no noise components higher than -120dB, and many of them sit around -130dB. Few interfaces are able to achieve this level of performance, let alone any I've tested."

The Mbox Pro Pro Review is curretnly underway and I absolutely think it's worth checking out - there are more graphs, more specs, and a great discussion that's ongoing. Contribute your own questions today!

Avid drops Torq 2.0, breaks into new markets with Venom, and more at the 2011 NAMM Show

Mark Williams — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:28:00 GMT

Greetings from the 2011 NAMM show! We are so excited to continue building on the momentum Avid has generated since AES in November, and we aren’t wasting any time in delivering new innovative products. This week we’re announcing live performance and recording solutions that will take us into new markets, including an aggressive jump back into the DJ space.

The new tools—which include the M-Audio® Venom® virtual analog synthesizer, Torq® 2.0 DJ software, the Eleven® Rack Expansion Pack and new Mbox® family options—deliver innovative, professional features and flexible, open workflows so artists can create distinctive and compelling audio, in the studio or on stage. Overall, these new solutions have been designed to empower musicians to elevate their sound in a bold way. Here’s a quick snapshot of the goods:

Venom (now available for $599)
- M-Audio Venom synthesizer delivers an aggressive take on the emulation of classic analog synthesis. And we do mean aggressive. Downright rude, actually. With an emphasis on grit and grime, Venom is voiced for today's music production.
- Extensive sound design capabilities, along with a full-sized 49-note keyboard and ergonomic design, deliver an incredible amount of power with infinite possibilities for sound creation.

Torq 2.0 (available in February for $249.99)
- This DJ software offers an open platform for creative performance and production. Use M-Audio's Xponent or Connectiv or any third party DJ controller with Torq 2.0.
- Four virtual decks with EQ, level control, headphone cueing and crossfade Traq Morph™ technology
- Check out the free 30-Day demo today!

Eleven Rack Expansion Pack (available in March for $99)
- Expanded guitar amp emulation add on for Eleven Rack offers new guitar and bass amp effects emulations, along with speaker-cone break-up and a new dynamic stereo delay.
- Channel strip style compressor and parametric EQ have been added for vocal chain processing on any signal.

MBox recording solutions - standalone and bundled with Pro Tools 9 (available in March pricing starts at $399 for the standalone hardware, or $699.99 for the bundles)
- For the first time ever, Mboxes will be offered without Pro Tools. With improved driver support and all new preamps and conversion, the completely redesigned Mbox is a superior front end for any DAW and now can be purchased by itself at a lower price for dedicated users of other DAWs who are looking for the best-in-class front end for their system.
- The new bundles: Pro Tools + Mbox Pro, Pro Tools + Mbox and Pro Tools + Mbox Mini—give musicians and engineers the ability to turn their Mac or PC into a portable recording, mixing and production studio using the industry’s most popular DAW for an Avid-advantaged workflow

Keep an eye on Avid Buzz for more news and updates from the NAMM show floor!

Tape Op and Avid Team Up To Give Away a Complete Pro Tools 9 System

Mark Williams — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:21:00 GMT

Dream of creating award-winning music with the industry’s most popular DAW? Turn your dream into a reality by entering Tape Op’s Pro Tools Giveaway.

Our friends at the magazine are giving away our breakthrough Pro Tools 9 software and Pro Tools Mbox Pro recording system to one lucky fan.

Whether you’re already a Pro Tools guru, or just looking to get started, this is an incredible giveaway you don’t want to miss out on!

Enter to win before January 31, 2011 at the following link: http://forms.avid.com/forms/TapeOpProTools

AES Online Videos Feature Pro Tools version 9

Mark Williams — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:04:00 GMT

The launch of Pro Tools version 9 at AES was nothing less than earth-shaking. Artists, customers and music enthusiasts alike were stoked about the new workflow options and features, expressing personal gratitude via blog posts, Tweets, Facebook likes, etc. The media couldn’t contain their excitement either – take a look at these online overviews from Keyboard, Sound on Sound, and Electronic Musician.

Keyboard Editor Steve Fortner interviews Avid’s Luke Smith about Pro Tools 9. This clip, the first of two from Keyboard, focuses on the new support in Pro Tools 9 for the Avid EUCON™ open Ethernet protocol, and Luke demo’s an Artist Series Control unit working seamlessly with PT9.

In this second video from Keyboard, Avid’s Kerry Rose takes viewers through key features in Pro Tools 9, communicating that for the first time users can work with third-party hardware.

This Sound on Sound video provides detailed insight on the new flexible workflows Pro Tools 9 offers, including the option to work natively while on the road. Avid’s Tony Cariddi outlines several other key features and ties it all back around to the incredible value Pro Tools 9 delivers.

Avid’s Kerry Rose is featured again in a Gearwire video from AES, and he walks viewers through the Automatic Delay Compensation feature and EUCON control surface support.

Rounding out the AES videos collection is Electronic Musician’s online clip, where Kerry Rose dives into the new features in Pro Tools 9, and explains how important customer feedback has been to our product development. No embedding was available for this clip, but you can view it here.

We’ll be sure to bring you more customer, media and artist reaction to the release in the coming weeks!