Engineer's Corner - Spotlight on David Glasser

In this year's newsletters, we will feature profiles of Airshow's engineers. This month we talk with David Glasser, Airshow founder and chief engineer at the Boulder studio.

As many of his clients will attest, David is a master of his craft. It doesn't hurt that he's also a pretty cool guy.

Grateful Dead "30 Trips Around the Sun" Box Set Announced

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead, Rhino Records is producing a massive box set of unreleased concert recordings, a 288 page book, and other surprises. 30 Trips Around the Sun includes a complete concert from each year of the band's career, totaling 30 shows. It's available as an 80 CD box set, or a USB drive (in the shape of a lighting bolt!) with high resolution 96k 24 bit audio. David Glasser worked for 6 months mastering this project, in parallel with Jeffrey Norman (each mastering 15 shows) and producer David Lemieux. It's fascinating to hear the evolution of the Grateful Dead's music and performances (not to mention the technology) over the years. "Unlike the previous Grateful Dead projects I've been involved with, '30 Trips' presented some unique challenges," David says. "Where the 73 discs of the Europe '72 box set were consistent - same instruments, crew, and recording rig - every show in this project is different, and I think that is one of the cool things about this." Plangent Processes was used on the 12 shows that were recorded to analog open reel tape. Purchase this limited special edition collection (the box ships in September).

Now it's off to Santa Clara and Chicago for the Fare Thee Well concerts!

Takoma Park Studio Build - New Allyworld Photos

June was another big month for Allyworld developments. Ceiling and wall diffusers went in (as well as the AC - perfect timing) and we even found a chance amidst the chaos to do a full recording project of Renaissance music!

Check out some photos of our new acoustic panels as well as the very first tracking session in the new space (it was sounding terrific!).

Allyworld is a a build-out of Airshow Takoma Park's current tracking room. The new space, which will be completed by this fall, will also be a multi-use performance venue available for rental for house-concert style events, speakers' series, workshops, rehearsals and video shoots. Please follow us on Facebook for the latest updates about Allyworld's opening.

Archive News - Ann Blonston Reports from ARSC

The Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) holds an information-packed annual conference, with sessions of interest to record collectors, archivists and librarians and to technical folks like us. Ann Blonston found some sobering statistics about how many at-risk recordings are sitting in dark archives at institutions, and also some signs of hope, including useful tools for practitioners trying to set priorities for addressing their own "insurmountable opportunity."