Universal Audio WebZine
Volume 2, Number 5, June 2004
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UAD-1 Universe - This Month at Universal Audio
Featured Employee: Production Line Anchor Patrick Truscott

Patrick Truscott
Patrick Truscott is Universal Audio's anchor in the analog production team; he's not only been onboard longer than anyone, he's an avid fan of the company and takes pride in making every unit the best it can be. Early on, Patrick moved down the line from Sub-Assembly to Final Assembly and Line Lead for over half of UA's hardware products starting with the 2-610 and M610, and later the 6176, 2192, 2-1176.

He has now moved further down the line to Bench Tester, ensuring every unit that arrives at his table is tuned, calibrated and meets the highest quality standards that the UA customer expects. Furthermore, he's still the "go-to guy" when there's questions on how to put just about any UA hardware together. Patrick shared his thoughts about his new position in testing.

"I'm learning that our bench testing has really evolved and been refined, and the process is more efficient. Certain changes have been made to ensure catching problems earlier in the testing process rather than later. On certain units, just changing the particular order of operations has increased efficiency. The sequence of events is now scripted in the Audio Precision analysis tests."

A native to mid-northern B.C. Canada, Patrick came to Santa Cruz in 1985.
He considers himself "an introspective quiet reader" but he also plays piano, is a video game junkie (1st person shooters are his favorite) and dabbles in martial arts and back alley chiropractic care.

Patrick shared his thoughts on working at Universal Audio.
"UA is such a cool place! It's relaxed but energetic, and very team oriented. I really appreciate the workmanship of our gear. I like finding out about people I really respect in the music business who are raving about our stuff and appreciate good gear as musicians."

-Will Shanks

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TapeOpCon 2004 Wrap Up
Bill Putnam and George Massenberg after "The Future of Music"
TapeOpCon Gear giveaway winner with his new M-610
Panelists listen on Michael Brauer's buss compression techniques
TapeOpCon 2004 was another smashing success for the gang at Tape Op, and the sultry southern environs of New Orleans were ideally suited for the low-key atmosphere that TapeOpCon attendees have come to expect. The organizational aspects were improved for this newly established conference, as were the panels and workshops. Some highlights were a great live interview given by Larry Crane to Cosimo "Cosmo" Matassa, legendary rock and roll engineer, as well as some hilarious MC'ing by none other than Harry "Derek Smalls" Shearer, bass player and co-writer for the film Spinal Tap, the classic Heavy Metal "rockumentary".

Attendees rolled up their shirtsleeves and dug in voraciously to the many excellent panels and workshops. UA co-founder Bill Putnam Jr. participated in a lively and heated discussion entitled " The Future of Music", which focused on current and upcoming music distribution options and the rise of independent labels and artists.

UA product specialist Will Shanks helped out with the "Compressors Do's and Don'ts" workshop, which discussed differences in analog gain reduction technologies as well as the value and place of digital compressor emulations in the mixing environment. Of special interest were comments from Michael Brauer, who has developed unique bussing techniques, which were originally shared in a past issue of Tape Op.

The after hours parties were held at The Howlin' Wolf near the French quarter, and many fantastic performers were presented. Calexico, Pedro the Lion, John Doe, Mississippi All-Stars and Vic Chestnutt were among the incredible line-up.

Check out the gallery for more pics!

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UAD-1 3.5.2

Work is in progress on a UAD-1 3.5.2 interim release, which will address a few more issues on the OSX platform. This will be especially good news for Mac G5 users. We expect this release to go public by the end of June.

  • G5 Performance Improvements
  • Mac OS X Text Entry
  • Mono In/Stereo Out support for Digital Performer
  • Improved Support for Fxpansion's VST-RTAS Adapter

For the future, you can be assured that the cooks in the UAD-1 kitchen are hard at work on awesome new features and plugs, which will be coming out later this year.

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AES Lecture At Universal Audio: June 8th 2004 @ 7pm
In collaboration with Paul Howard, our local AES chapter committee member, UA will be hosting a factory tour and lecture series with catering for Bay Area AES members on Tuesday, June 8th 2004 at UA headquarters in Santa Cruz. This is a unique opportunity to hear directly from some of the developers and designers of the UA analog and digital gear and meet many of the UA gang in person. More details and contact information can be found at the following links.

AES-SF Web Site

AES-SF Contact/Officers/Committee

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CCRMA Summer Workshops
Our very own Doctors Jonathan Abel & Dave Berners will be lecturing on Digital Signal Processing Effects at the picturesque Banff Center located in the Candadian Rocky Mountains during their annual Summer Workshops. The DSP II : Audio Effects program dates run from August 16th to August 27th 2004. Check out the following links for more information.

CCRMA@Banff Summer Workshops: Digital Signal Processing (DSP) II: Digital Audio Effects

Banff Music & Sound Programs

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President Matt Ward presents the inner workings of the 6176
Local Coverage for Universal Audio The Santa Cruz Sentinel recently ran an extensive business article documenting UA's growth, history and the company's geographical movements in the community. If you want to know a little more about the inner-workings of UA and how it all began, check it out here.

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Artists & UA
R&B/Latin/Hip-Hop engineer/producer Hector Delgado dropped by the UA to say hello and take a tour. Hector recently added an LA-2A, 1176LN, 2-610 & 2108 to complete his Van Nuys "Clockworks Lab" studio redesign and added 2 more UAD-1s to existing 2 for a full-blown 4-card system! Thanks for stopping in Hector!

Hector Delgado
Experimental electronic musician, DJ and Schematic records artist Richard Devine added a UAD-1 to his rig, and is interviewed here in the UA Webzine in depth this month. If you're into non-mainstream electronica, he's also featured this month in the excellent, sporadically published, underground Industrial magazine Industrial Nation featuring experimental/industrial/EBM/darkwave artists.

On an entirely different musical note, Grammy award-winning Producer/Engineer Mark Linett has been working on mixing Brian Wilson's lost classic Smile album, which will finally see the light on Nonesuch Records, thirty-seven years after its original scheduled release. Mark, a long-time vintage UA aficionado and owner of several UA vintage consoles and outboard tools has been using UA's digital products including the new TDM plug-ins as part of the project.

If Pet Sounds is considered to be the supreme example of 20th century American pop - or the Beach Boys "Rubber Soul" equivalent, Then Smile is considered to be more a "pop-art masterpiece" - the American answer to the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper.

The original Smile sessions were produced entirely by Brian Wilson in late '66 and early '67. However, at the time the Beach Boys were suing Capitol Records and there was internal personnel wrangling over the commercial direction of the band. Suffice it to say that commercialism won and art lost - until now.

Mark Linett has produced and engineered the Beach Boys Capitol era CD releases including the DVD-A release of Pet Sounds which includes mono, stereo and 5.1 mixes along with the original album promo film from 1966 ( See Link below )

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-Mike Barnes

Questions or comments on this article?