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TRUE ASPEN
ASPEN, 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.
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