Sunday 15 June 2008

Equipment set-up: 12.00noon
Jazz performance: 5.00pm

This Sunday we will be recording a live performance at a meeting of the Wgtn Jazz Club. As mentioned previously this project is to allow you to work alongside our own experienced professionals to pick up tips and tricks the best way possible; by being there and doing it!

Equipment set up starts at 12.00 noon at The Loaded Hog Ballroom, where we have met previously this year. All help with this aspect of the afternoon is appreciated, and you will be able to "get your hands dirty".

The band performance will commence at 5.00pm and there will be a $15 entry fee should you wish to sit in on this. The recording control room will be in the bar next door where we will be monitoring the performance.

Be sure to make the most of this generous donation of time and resources by our volunteers. All questionS will be answered!

This marks the first phase of a recording project aimed at giving members the opportunity to be involved in the entire process, from planning through recording and final mixing. The meeting will be a pre-production session, chaired by our own John Neill (Head of Sound at Park Road Post) with discussion and suggestions from the audience welcome.

Our friends at the Wellington Jazz Club will be providing the performance at one of their regular monthly get-togethers on Sunday 15 June (details to follow later).

We look forward to your company at Bodega on Ghuznee Street, where you may wish to enjoy a drink and a meal before the meeting.

Dennis Wickstead of Gencom Technologies will unravel the mysteries of HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface). This is now a common connector on DVD players, home theatre receivers, flat screens and computers. This standard carries high resolution video and audio on a single cable but has its own hooks and traps (of course) which Dennis will run through.

WAA committee members Marcus Wilson and Mike Gibson will lead a hands-on studio recording session for WAA members only on micing up a drum kit.

Do you own or use a wireless microphone? You may be aware of the impending introduction of digital terrestrial television by the Freeview consortium. This transmission will be in the UHF band and in many circumstances will take spectrum space currently used by wireless microphones. This has far reaching implications affecting many of our members in the professional arena as well as church groups, schools and touring events not to mention institutions like Te Papa who have had a large wireless mic system rendered useless by test transmissions. Advances made by some wireless mic distributors to the Radio Frequency Service have so far been met with intransigence. Next Tuesday we will be addressed by David Fuller of Jands (Shure wireless distributor) and Stephen Buckland of Sound Techniques (Lectrosonics wireless distributor) on the current state of play. This is your chance to get involved in an issue that affects you! It is the committee’s intention to make some noise about this. If you have some pent-up outrage this is an opportunity to use it.

Hold onto your hats, it’s that time of year already! The WAA end of year function has once again raced up on us, but thanks to your intrepid committee, matters are well in hand.

We will be celebrating at Time Cinema in Lyall Bay/Melrose, which is a privately owned 40 seat cinema together with an associated area devoted to the display of vintage commercial and amateur film equipment. The event is open to members and friends/partners. The door fee covers food, drinks and screening of selected gems from the Time Cinema archive. Numbers are limited so please RSVP to Tim Hyndman so we don’t overbook and indicate if you require vegetarian catering.

This month we visit what has become an icon of Wellington - the Westpac Stadium - for a behind-the-scenes look at the audio and big screen systems guided by WAA member Peter McDowell and our friends at TVNZ Avalon.

Our thanks to Westpac Stadium Ops Manager Mark Nunn and Building Manager Brian Lines for allowing us access to the facility.

WAA members Dean Brain and Barry Cookwill be guiding us through Parliament for a look at the debating chamber audio and video systems. These provide local sound reinforcement and feeds for radio and television broadcast. The brand new television production system features 8 Hi-Def capable robotic cameras, two identical control rooms, touch screen control and IP audio routing. If that whets your appetite then join us for a close up look..

Jon will be bringing a Soundcraft Vi6 mixer with him, so be sure to join us for a hands-on demonstration. It may be of interest to Studer fans to know that Soundcraft and Studer are located in the same factory and share all their digital technology.

This month we have another site visit. Terry Steven and Adrian Marshall of Amstore (CD & DVD duplication) will be hosting us at their facility in Miramar. Adrian will be fresh back from a conference in the USA with news on the latest developments regarding BLU-Ray and HD-DVD which have implications for us audio folk. Of interest will be their rather spectacular screen printing machine which is capable of printing 3500 discs per hour.

WIN WIN WIN!!

Many of us burn our own "master" CDs. You may have wondered, on occasion, about the quality of the burn and how many bit errors occur. Now is the time to put your burner to the test! Bring along your master (with no more than 10 minutes of music on it please) and Terry will run it through his analyser. The CD with the lowest error rate will win 100 blank CDs.

Mark Poletti made a thoroughly enjoyable presentation on his work at IRL in virtual acoustics and demonstrated the "steering" of audio by phase shifting. Mark also demonstrated the solid state "valve" guitar amplifier he has built (he'll probably throttle me for that description). Some of you may have read "scientist" and "virtual acoustics" and thought only those with a brain the size of the universe should attend, but this was totally not the case. Mark is able to explain things in terms anyone can understand and is such a valuable resource that we look forward to another presentation by him in the near future.

WAA member Andy Craig of Western Audio will be relating stories from his vast experience as a Live Sound engineer. Over the last couple of decades Andy has “done the sound” for events such as;

Kiri Te Kanawas Homecoming concerts
International Rugby fixtures
Sir Howard Morrison
Christmas in the Park
The Pink Floyd Experience
Morrisey
Elvis Costello
Dancing with the Stars
and many more

Andy will be fresh from working on the weekends Summer Set concert at the Basin Reserve featuring Shapeshifter and Fat Freddys Drop, so bring your friends and we’ll see you there!

Tuning foldback monitors