Audio Consultants Musical Events - past and future

The Audio Consultants are returning to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Reading East at Winnersh Triangle for their Musical Event No 8. This will be held on the Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 July 2024 in the Sandhurst Suite between 10am and 5pm. We are very familiar with his quality venue which allows for a more comfortable and controlled listening experience for our visitors. The Suite is well proportioned and allows for a good acoustic. The two sources will be the Origin Live Calypso turntable with their Illustrious tone arm and fitted with a Hana Umami Blue cartridge , and the new CD player from Hegel called The Viking . The amplification duties will be split between the Soulnote A2 integrated amplifier and the Exposure 5010 pre-amplifier and 5010 dual-mono power amplifiers . The Soulnote A2 amplifier an above average proportion of Class A from a Class A/AB principle.

The recording session on Saturday 7 October will be between 11am and 1pm. There will be a limited number of tickets available to this closed door event at the registration desk.

Following the successes of our previous Musical Events with Crescent Audio, we have been invited to reproduce the Live vs Recorded Event at the UK Audio Show 2023. Clearly this will be more challenging doing such remotely from a studio environment but Damon Sawyer and The Audio Consultants have worked on a plan together to be able to present this at this UK Audio Show.

We hosted two, day-long, sessions of this live music event, a collaboration with Crescent Records in their beautiful recording space in Swindon. This was similar to our Musical Event No 6 but with longer, more relaxed, sessions and with the addition of Fleur Stephenson on vocals to the trio led by Pete Billington. We heard various arrangements of tunes that were recorded by Damon Sawyer, Crescent Records recording engineer. Over the course of the two days, several tracks were recorded, which included a couple of a retakes to some, which we are likely to include on the final CD to show the organic evolution of a particular musical arrangement. A trio consisting of piano, acoustic bass (this time being the acclaimed Alec Dankworth), and drums was chosen, as these instruments cover a wide range of the audible spectrum we listen to. For this event, Fleur Stephenson a very fine jazz vocalist to the mix gave an extra dimension and interest. Damon took a lot of care pre-setting some of the microphones prior to our sessions and explained in some detail how he had selected the different microphones for each application, including ambient microphones. The majority were used on the drums, with just a stereo pair on the piano and single microphone for the upright bass. A very fine valve microphone was used for the vocals. Damon further explained his method of placing microphones, recording, blending, and mastering based on his long experience in the industry, The principal aim being to capture the individual instruments as realistically and as naturally as possible. He explained how he records t PCM 384 kHz/24 bit, controls factors such as audio spill, includes room ambience during the recording, and the EQ and compression techniques he needs to employ in post-production to balance the instruments and in this case, the singer. To be clear, this was a recording session, rather than a live ‘gig’. This was interesting, as Fleur’s projection was nuanced but very quiet. She could hardly be heard in the recording space itself but could be clearly heard in the mixing suite. This gave a great insight into the recording process.

Due to the success of our last musical event, we have decided to expand on this theme. Our last Event was held in Crescent Records studio, where we invited a live jazz trio who were recorded and mastered by Crescent Record’s engineer Damon Sawyer.

We hosted two sessions of this Musical Event that was different to those we have done before. It was a live music event that was a collaboration with Crescent Records in their beautiful recording space in Swindon.

The Audio Consultants will be hosting their Musical Event No. 6 at the Crescent Records, Swindon, Wiltshire on Saturday 3 December and now Sunday 4 December 2022.

The Audio Consultants will be exhibiting at the UK Audio Show 2022 on the weekend of 8 and 9 October in the Worcester Suite on the 1st Floor at the Staverton Park Hotel, Daventry.

The Audio Consultants will be hosting two Musical Events at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Reading East at Winnersh Triangle. The first of these will be on the Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 May 2022 in the Sandhurst Suite between 10am and 5pm.