TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, April 4, 2013 — During this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) music and media conference, Waves Audio, the industry leader in professional audio digital signal processing for the consumer, live sound and professional audio market sectors, helped optimize the quality of live and archived streams powered by Dell from The FADER FORT Presented by Converse’s award-winning, four-day event.
The Waves team spearheaded the design and coordination of the audio mixing, processing and archiving solution installed at The FADER FORT Presented by Converse for the festivities, which were held in Austin, Texas, March 13-16. Waves provided its SoundGrid® professional audio processing and networking technology for the event. The SoundGrid technology was hosted on high-performance Dell Precision workstations to enable processing of the dedicated broadcast audio mix, together with multi-track archiving of shows by a line-up of innovative and emerging artists. The fully redundant system included dual Allen & Heath iLive digital audio mixing consoles and associated MixRacks outfitted with M-Waves audio networking cards. Each M-Waves interface card supported real-time processing of up to 64 audio channels by Waves-compatible plug-ins hosted on the SoundGrid platforms. The cards additionally fed 48 channels of unprocessed audio via SoundGrid’s Audio-over-Ethernet networking protocol to the PreSonus Studio One multi-track recording software. This setup allowed engineers Ken “Pooch” Van Druten (Linkin Park, Slash, Van Halen) and Brett Orrison (Hard Rock Hotel, House of Blues) to fine-tune the broadcast mix between artist performances through the system’s virtual soundcheck capabilities. Van Druten and Orrison mixed with the aid of Focal Solo6 BE near field monitors.
Tomer Elbaz, Executive Vice President, Waves Audio Consumer Electronics Division, stated, “The Dell Precision workstations give creative professionals new levels of performance, and it is fitting that Waves is able to offer our professional audio expertise and, with our SoundGrid platform, provide the ultimate live streaming solution for the showcase. Waves DSP and design are used by leading professional producers and engineers in all areas of entertainment audio, and our ongoing collaboration with Dell allows us to provide comprehensive processing solutions.”
Van Druten stated, “This truly was a flawless event. We saw over fifty bands in five days, and the Dell Precision workstations never missed a beat running Waves MultiRack and 64 channels of multitrack audio. Combined with the Allen & Heath iLive, the Waves SoundGrid made for giant sounds in a small package. All in all, a home run.”
The final broadcast audio mix was transported to a NewTek video production switcher, where it was combined with the onstage camera signals. That content was then sent to two Dell Precision M6700 Covet Edition mobile workstations, featuring Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme Edition processors, for encoding to a web-friendly format for live streaming.
“As leaders in their respective market sectors, it is natural that Dell and Waves are partnering to bring the precise professional studio sound of FADER FORT Presented by Converse performances to consumers,” stated Jack Joseph Puig, Waves Director of Creative Innovation. “With Waves’ professional audio expertise, combined with Dell’s industry leading workstations, we can enable professional producers and engineers in all areas of entertainment audio to do what they do best. We look forward to continuing to work with Dell to introduce some exciting technological innovations in audio.”
The FADER FORT Presented by Converse, with live stream powered by Dell, hosted four days of performances by some of today’s most innovative and emerging artists, including Solange, Earl Sweatshirt, DIIV, Sky Ferreira, The Afghan Whigs and many others. Surprise guests included Usher, Diddy, Macklemore, Trae, T.I., B.O.B., Yo Gotti, Travis Scott and Pharrell.
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