Facilities fear US Crew Invasion

Discussions at the Facilities Lunch held at Groucho's on 15th May revealed a number of concerns shared by Audio Post and Music studios. 

The increasingly prevalent practice of US productions flying in their own crews is already having a serious impact on many UK facilities and, whilst some Post-Production houses would attract work on a dry-hire basis, the talent and skills of UK based staff and freelance engineers and editors is being left out of the equation. There are fears that UK working practices are perceived as being slower but cheaper than in the US and that our cheaper rates would be eroded by dry-hire clients becoming liable for VAT. Budget handling and personal working style seemed to be more important to many US producers than the superior use of technology and creative finesse for which the UK is renowned and so attracting top-flight US productions is expected to become increasingly difficult. 

Education and Training was another topic of discussion where a damning indictment of the value of FED Audio courses formed the prevailing opinion. 

It was suggested that acquiring a qualification in audio would be of little benefit to prospective employees. The most commonly held view was that attitude and long term commitment were the key factors that persuade studios owners to hire new staff. There was a general yearning for apprenticeship type training so that employees could respond to the particular working practices of a business. Facilities owners agreed that often a qualification in a subject other than audio would indicate a more considered enthusiasm and commitment to developing a career.

Abbey Road Play:BACK News Service

One of EMI's most enduring and successful assets, Abbey Road Studios, is launching a publication which it calls a brozine (a brochure-cum-magazine).

Play:BACK, which will have a feature based format is more about the people and projects of Abbey Road than simply just the building and equipment.

Abbey Road's Fiona Gillott commented "We believe that this approach will give the reader a satisfying taste of the uniquely wide range of work that Abbey Road Studios can accommodate as well as some insight into current industry issues".

For a copy of Play:BACK please contact Fiona Gillott on 020 7266 7257 or email [email protected]

Gearbox launch New AMS-Neve and Apple services

An extensive range of AMS Neve outboard gear is now available for sale and hire from London-based GearBox (Sound and Vision) Limited.

Commenting on their recent appointment as an authorised Neve Vintage Outboard dealer, GearBox's MD Richard Eastwood said "everyone in the industry has massive respect for the Neve channel amplifiers, as well as the compressors, which we also stock".

GearBox is promoting the Neve 1081 and 1081R channel amplifiers as an ideal front-end to add major studio performance to Digidesign Pro Tools and other hard disk recording systems, as well as increasing the channel capacity of existing consoles.

Reflecting on the authenticity of the AMS Neve components Eastwood explained, every component in, say, an AMS Neve 1081 is identical to those in the units that have been made from 1972 onwards. In fact, AMS Neve will tell you: "if you find an old one that sounds different, get it serviced! All that s happened is that it s drifted off spec over time".

Gearbox's other news concerns their plan to focus on Mac OS X audio at the Production Show. As well as hosting two seminars with Apple, they will present continuous demonstrations of Apple Final Cut Pro 4 and audio applications Digidesign Pro Tools v6.1 and Emagic Audio Platinum.

GearBox (Sound and Vision) is an Apple Solutions Expert for both audio and video products, an authorised Apple Reseller and Digidesign Approved AVP (Audio Video Professional dealer.) The company operates the largest hire fleet of Apple Macintosh based Final Cut Pro, Digidesign Pro Tools, and Avid systems in Europe.

http://www.gearbox.com

Over the Tannoy... and beyond!

Future developments at the UK's 75 years old loudspeaker manufacturer, Tannoy, look set to be even more energetic and exciting now that it has merged with the Danish TC Group of companies. 

The TC Group sees itself as a modern and vibrant company at the forefront of digital technologies so we can expect the combined expertise of Tannoy and TC to take advantage of the current trend towards convergence of digital and acoustic technologies within the whole audio industry.

In part driven by the emerging surround technologies of SACD and DVDA, Tannoy's new Ellipse range is the first of an entirely new generation of studio monitors, featuring Tannoy WideBand technology which they claim set new standards of quality for reference monitoring.

The Ellipse is a fully time-coherent, 3-way, active system, utilising Dual Concentric driver technology plus a separately housed SuperTweeter. says Tannoy's Tim Lount. The two models, Ellipse 8 and the Ellipse 10 offer a choice of power handling and low frequency performance, allowing optimisation for different working environments. Each system delivers a frequency response extending to above 50kHz for monitoring of wideband programme material.

Link: http://www.tannoy.com