Universal Audio WebZine
Volume 2, Number 6, July 2004
[UA Universe] [Ask the Doctors] [Digital Discourse] [Analog Obsession]
[Support Report] [Dealer Focus] [Digi-Talk] [Analog Dialog] [Featured Promotion]
[Graphic-Rich WebZine]
[Back Issues] [UA Home]

UA Universe: What's happening at UA?

Amy Martzolf
Featured Employee: Big Sky Dreamer Amy Martzolf

Amy Martzolf's official title at Universal Audio is bookkeeper, but she provides support for accounting, administration and manufacturing. One of her main jobs is maintaining a library of transactions and receipts, which she obsessively organizes. Her co-workers may find her laughing a lot, drinking way too much coffee, and talking to her little paper clip friend that lives on her computer screen.

She was hired through an employment agency to temporarily help out with the famous Dreamverb giveaway almost nine months ago. When the promotion ended she was asked to stay on. I asked Amy what unique qualities made her suited as a permanent hire.

"I'm not exactly sure why, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with my unique ability to communicate with creatures living in my PC and of course my obsessive organizational skills."

The reasons why she decided to take the job with Universal Audio team are many.

"The people from UA are all amazing, talented individuals, whom I have so much to learn from. The office atmosphere has a homier feel rather than a corporate feel, and there's room to be yourself. Everyone is appreciated as an essential part of the whole. I'm proud of the history of the company and of the hard work and dedication to quality that every product is born from. It's really exciting to be part of a company that designs and manufactures awesome products for musical creation."

A year ago she'd never even heard of Universal Audio, or Santa Cruz, for that matter. She was living in Billings, Montana, working at a hospital and hanging out on her friend's 120-acre island on the Yellowstone River. That beautiful piece of land, surrounded by pure mountain water, soon became home to a magical festival of free expression called "The Island." During the first annual festival, a group of Santa Cruzians landed, rocked the party, and kidnapped Amy back to California with them.

Scene from Amy's performance in "Hemotrope"
Watch the entire 12 minute film
In addition to working at Universal Audio, Amy recently had the honor of acting in two short films, "A+B" and "Hemotrope," both written, directed and produced by fellow Santa Cruzian, Kate Geaghan. She also spends her time in paradise feeding an ever-growing addiction to reading, dancing with the ocean and pondering the meaning of life.

Amy is going back to Montana to participate in the 2nd annual "The Island" festival this month. The event is from July 22-July 25th, near Billings, Montana. Go to www.gotitogether.com for more information.

-Will Shanks

<top>

UA TEC Award Nominations - Your chance to vote!
The Nominations for the 2004 TEC Awards, which will be voted by the readers of Mix Magazine, have been announced. UA is proud to announce that after our win in 2003 for the 6176 in the Mic-Preamp arena, we have again been nominated in 2 new categories:

  • Digital Converter Technology
    • Apogee Rosetta 800
    • Dolby DP563 with Pro Logic II
    • Metric Halo ULN-2 +DSP
    • MOTU 828mkII FireWire audio interface
    • Prism ADA-8 with DSD Interface
    • Universal Audio 2192 Master Audio Interface

  • Signal Processing Technology/Hardware
    • Drawmer SP2120 limiter
    • Eventide H8000 8-channel effects processor
    • Roger Linn Design AdrenaLinn II
    • SSL XLogic Multichannel Compressor
    • TC Electronic Reverb 4000
    • Universal Audio 2-1176 Twin Vintage Limiting Amplifier

The ballots will appear in the August issue of Mix sent to the 41000 Mix subscribers. Full details of how to vote are here :
http://www.mixfoundation.org/tec/voting.html

For the complete list of Technical Achievement & Creative Achievement nominees, checkout the following link:
http://www.mixfoundation.org/tec/04nominees.html


<top>


New UA Reviews and Awards
The 2-1176 Twin Vintage Limiting Amplifier is featured on the front cover of the July issue of Recording Magazine, with an in-depth review and some typically beautiful Recording photos.

"The 2-1176 is another unqualified success for Universal Audio. It is a beautiful piece of gear, and (much like the 6176) is easy to use in every application. It also sounds exceptional."
-Darwin Grosse, Recording Magazine, July 2004.



We have also recently revamped uaudio.com with a complete list of PDF or linkable reviews for every UA product, so don't take our word for it! You can now conveniently read the entire independent web and magazine reviews for a given UA product from one reference page.

The UAD-1 recently won a 2nd Platinum Award for the Project Pak from Future Music Magazine (UK) who called it "...the digital audio equivalent of Viagra!" Check out this new review and the comprehensive historical reviews for UAD-1 on our website.


<top>

Recall Sheets
Now... you can finally throw away those hand-scrawled recall sheets, post-it notes and napkins! We now have some nice new PDF recall sheets generated from the original silk screen art, so for all those that still like to keep a good old-fashioned paper backup of the session settings of their analog gear - we have you covered! These are also provided in the documents section for each product along with the user manual & brochure.


<top>


New Additions to UA's Historical Archives
For all those that like to keep an eye on current UA Trade events around the world or like to check out UA historical memorabilia, we are constantly expanding our company gallery.

Of particular note is the downloadable PDF of an original 1967 full-line Universal Audio Product brochure and price-list which vintage enthusiasts will love.


<top>

Bruce Swedien Lectures at CSU Summer Arts Program
UA will be supporting Bruce Swedien's Audio Lectures as part of "The Art Of Sound Recording" lectures at CSU this Summer. Bruce has a long and illustrious engineering career beginning with apprenticing with Bill Putnam senior back in 1957. The UA 2-610, 2108 Mic-Pre's and the 2192 Master Audio Interface will all be featured. For more information, see the CSU site.


<top>

Berklee School of Music
Term five starts July 6th! Reserve your seat now!

Brendan Buckley
UA & Artist News
Jay Newland, Norah Jones' grammy-award winning engineer for both her platinum albums and a huge 2-1176 fan is adding a 2192 Master Audio Interface to his essential studio rig.

Brendan Buckley
Shakira's drummer and co-writer Brendan Buckley just relocated from Miami to LA and added a couple of 6176 Channel Strips as a premium front-end to his new production studio.

-Mike Barnes

Questions or comments on this article?