Dec 2003
Meeting Review
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Dec 2003 Meeting Review |
Eddie Kramer and Richard Chycki at Metalworks
On December 10th, 2002 the Toronto section of the AES was treated to an evening of relaxed discussions and a tour of Metalworks as a way to see out the current year.The evening began with Richard Chycki presenting his experiences in 5.1 mixing recent musical projects. There was talk of the previous years' mix at Metalworks of Triumph's live set from 1983's "US Festival" which related all too nicely to the history of the building we were in. This in turn fueled plenty of questions from the attendees regarding Richard Chycki's interesting history with many of the other projects he has been a part of.
Richard then also brought up his experiences with archival and related restoration concerns. Due to the recent projects he has undertaken in this area, he discussed reliability of media, future format compatibility and fidelity of older formats. There was much concern regarding what would happen with the digital media that is used for archival today. The many different formats may cause an even greater concern in the future due to outdated file formats, disc formats, and operating systems when the time comes to resurrect them. Despite his experience with analog calibration inconsistency and analog playback device reliability, the issue seems to be getting more inconsistent with the current crop of technology. However, in spite of these concerns, Richard had many positive stories to retell and was kind enough to answer the many questions that were asked of him during and after his presentation.
Following the break of catered food and member socializing, Eddie Kramer began his discussion as an extension to what Richard had begun. Eddie was currently at Metalworks working on a restoration project and presented his experiences with that. He discussed certain technologies on the topic of restoration including his positive experiences with the CEDAR systems, analog tape baking, and further retrieval issues. Discussions on the recent mix of the "Monterey Pop Festival" then introduced some of his methods of mixing music in surround. One specific topic of interest that raised a few questions was his development on a delay/reverberation technique to create a "rear wall" in the mixed acoustic space.
His concerns for the future were quite similar to that of Richard Chycki's media concerns and the formats to come. The rest of Eddie Kramer's segment continued with many accounts regarding the discoveries of historically significant recorded material and the ways they were found and restored. Many of which were a part of his own impressive past. In the end, Eddie Kramer left us all with the hope that he is still thinking about a surround mix of Electric Ladyland.
A much appreciated tour of Metalworks was also conducted with staff on hand to answer questions regarding the facility. This ended the official segment of the December 2002 meeting with further social time following the great presentations. Much thanks goes to all that were involved in offering their time and knowledge. It was most definitely appreciated by all in attendance.
by Marc Koecher, Executive Committee
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