Maynooth, Ireland; May 2007 – Pro audio manufacturer Audient’s recording console is once again first choice for a higher education facility. Boasting the largest Music Department in the country, and pioneers in the teaching of Music Technology, the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM), took delivery of their 36 channel ASP8024 recently.
Dr. Victor Lazzarini, Director of the Music Technology Laboratory at the University describes his decision to choose Audient as easy. "There was no competition. It offers exactly what we need: low noise, in-line mixing, easy routing, plenty of channels, groups and sub-groups, all within our budget."
Dr. Lazzarini, known also for his work developing the music programming language, Csound, explains the set-up: "The Audient desk is the centre piece of our studio; we do multi-track recording on a HD recorder, on a Mac and a PC as well as mastering."
"It should be noted that the studio is a teaching lab, so the routing aspects of the desk, as well as things such as EQ-ing are very important. The ASP8024 is a great training tool, as it has clear and logical signal paths with no hidden attributes. The principles of recording, mixing and mastering can be taught much better with Audient than on a digital desk."
"In addition, we use the ASP8024 for electronic music composition, so the computers are also sound sources. I have an 8-speaker rig, which is used for surround sound experiments and composition using ambisonics*. This is patched from the desk subgroups, which makes the whole thing very handy and easy to set up. The computers generate the eight-track decoded signal and I just route it through the desk."
NUIM was the first to offer undergraduate degree courses in this field in Ireland and has been teaching post-graduate courses in Music Technology and Computer Music for the past eight years. PhD students in the department are currently involved in research concentrated in Computer Music, sound synthesis and musical signal processing.
Dublin-based audio specialists Audio Warehouse provided the NUIM with a new desk. "We were very happy with the support we received in the commissioning and installation of our Audient desk," says Dr Lazzarini.
Visit www.AudioWarehouse.ie for their full range of audio equipment.
For further information about the Music Technology dept at the NUIM please visit: http://music.nuim.ie/musictec.
*Further information about ambisonics visit www.ambisonic.net.