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7.24.2003 The Aspen Music Festival's Benedict Music Tent at sunset is a TRUE experience.  TRUE ASPENASPEN, COLORADO: Every year the internationally renowned Aspen Music Festival and School presents a nine-week summer season of over 200 classical music events at its Colorado mountain retreat. Now in its 55th year, this year's festival will see 750 of the world's brightest music students converge to study with 200 of the world's finest artists and participate in a busy concert calendar at the famed Rocky Mountain resort. Ron Streicher, audio production manager of the Aspen Music Festival and School's Edgar Stanton Audio Recording Institute since 1996, will once again be supervising the recordings of the Festival's concert season. This year, Streicher is adding a TRUE Precision P2 Analog two-channel microphone preamplifier to the two TRUE Precision 8 eight-channel units in his setup. "I am very pleased with the quality of the TRUE Precision," comments Streicher. "It's the pre that I use whenever I pull out my ribbon mics. It's got lots of gain and it's clean and quiet. I can also turn off the phantom power." The TRUE Systems Precision 8 features eight channels of transformerless analog microphone preamplification and offers an astonishing frequency response of 1Hz to 500kHz. Modeled on the Precision 8, the P2 Analog offers two channels of mic pre, with an M-S decoder and Stereo Phase Correlation display. Streicher established his Pacific Audio-Visual Enterprises professional audio service in 1972, and is the co-author of "The New Stereo Soundbook." He has been a faculty member at Aspen since 1988, working with Juergen Wahl and John Eargle, under director Thomas Haines, to prepare students for a career in classical music recording through an intensive four-week course. The TRUE Precision system travels with him for all of his critical recording needs, he says. "I'm using it for recordings both here at the Aspen Festival and my own work. Almost everything we do here at the music festival, and most of what I do on my own, is live stereo mixing," explains Streicher, a foremost authority and much published author on the subject of stereo recording practices and techniques. "Our media and mastering product is Digidesign Pro Tools," he continues. "We're just going in 44.1kHz/16-bit. The reason for the choice of sample frequency and bit rate is simple," he adds. "Here at the music festival we are selling CDs the day after the concert. We record a concert, edit it that night, the next day it's mastered, and they're on sale that afternoon." The concerts are also frequently captured for broadcast on National Public Radio and WFMT, Chicago's Fine Arts Network. Streicher fields an impressive collection of more than 150 microphones, of all types and manufacturers. "Among my ribbon microphones, I now own a pair each of the AEA R84s and the R44s." AEA (Audio Engineering Associates) is owned and operated by Wes Dooley, Streicher's long-time friend and colleague with whom he has co-written technical papers on stereophonic techniques. "I also own four Coles 4038s and I have about a dozen miscellaneous RCA ribbons, 44s, 77s and others - all originals. My TRUE Precision 8 travels with me for all of my critical recording needs. I usually use it with all of my ribbon mics, but I've also been known to put Neumann mics through on several occasions." The theme of this year's Aspen Music Festival, under music director David Zinman, is "Musical Visionaries: Beethoven, Berlioz, and Beyond." Highlights include performances of four of Beethoven's nine symphonies, as well as master classes with Leon Fleisher on five Beethoven piano concertos, Puccini's "La Boheme" conducted by opera legend Julius Rudel, and Carol Vaness, James Morris, and Alfredo Portilla in a semi-staged version of Puccini's "Tosca." "Because of the need to keep sight lines clear for the staging and projection of the super titles for "Tosca"," noted Streicher, all microphones had to be kept either very low or very high. In order to cover the woodwind section of the orchestra, I chose to hang the new Sennheiser MKH 418 stereo mid/side interference "shotgun" microphone high over the winds. This proved to be a very successful addition to the mix and, as a result, I'm ready to add the 418 to my rather extensive inventory of microphones." Neumann's award winning line of microphones has set the standard in the industry since 1928. In 1999, Neumann received the prestigious Technical Grammy(r) for their 70 years of innovation in microphone design and contribution to the music industry. A continuing commitment to provide innovative, technically refined products and engineering solutions of proven quality ensures that Neumann's stature will remain unassailable. www.sennheiserusa.com www.neumannusa.com |
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