14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to music taken seriously (I mean without the crappy, pimpin' glamour other similar awards go on), I hope you'll agree with me that the Grammy are one of the best. Not that they are whore- and/or pimp-free but they just don't suck as much as other "mega" awards do and this is why I decided to tell you some little things on this year's edition.
Since the Grammy Awards are supposed to prize the best acts, it's rather understandable that they should work on the best tech available: this year, the Grammy audio reinforcement was provided by three of the ever best names in the field: Genelec, Audio-Technica and Shure.
Funny thing that along with this 49th edition of the Grammy Awards, the Audio-Technica celebrated their 10th Grammy presence. And something even cooler was the fact that one of the world's most respected metal producers, Rick Rubin, has won a Grammy prize for his work with the Grammy winners Justin Timberlake, Dixie Chicks and other not Rubin-esque acts such as RedHotChillyPeppers, U2 and the 2006 release Johnny Cash.
For those who don't know crap about whose bands production was made by Mr. Rubin, just check Slayer and the more contemporary System of a Down, Danzig and the hip-hop legend, Run-D.M.C.
Well, since so many really big names who made real history were gathered at the 2007 Grammys, I just have to tell you that Shure was by far the choice of most artists, including Christina Aguilera (Beta 87 wireless), Dixie Chicks (the legendary SM58 wireless). Justin Timberlake went for Audio-Technica AEW-T4100 (maybe Rick told him to do so...)
Audio-Technica has kindly stated in the press release regarding the Grammy Awards that "The sound system was provided by ATK AudioTek with FOH Engineers Ron Reaves and Mikael Stewart, while the broadcast audio was supervised by Phil Ramone and Hank Neuberger, leading members of the Producers & Engineers Wing of The Recording Academy?.
New York-based XM Productions/Effanel Music were onsite with their L7 remote truck to create the music mix, facilitated by Music Mixers John Harris and Eric Schilling, along with Orchestra Music Mixer and XM Productions/Effanel Music Lead Engineer Joel Singer.", to name but a few of those behind-the scenes who worked their a**es out for the perfection of the show.
CBS came in on the video: they have provided the home watchers with an intense 1,080 lines of picture resolution HDTV and truly astonishing 5.1 audio fed from the 270 Audio-Technica microphones around. The whole show, aired from the Staples Center in LA was coordinated acoustically by XM Productions/Effanel Music which used only Genelec monitoring for broadcast-survey, music mix L7 truck and Offline Remix Booth as well as for the orchestral music mix.
I hope you'll all agree with me as I say that having one single company assuring all kinds of monitoring at these high (and still rising) standards is the proof of outstanding quality and reliability.
Now, it remains to be seen what will the Grammy Awards bring us in the near future as the Recording Academy President, Neil Portnow "threatened" that in 2009 they hope to broadcast totally in HDTV/5.1 standards. We'd better buy new TVs at home...
