UA Universe
by Joseph Lemmer, Marsha Vdovin, & Terry Hardin

Featured Employee: Tracy Geier, Accounts Payable

Upcoming Events

Press • Artist • Engineer • Producer Gossip

Tech Talk

News and Schmooze

Featured Employee: Tracy Geier, Accounts Payable

Tracy Geier in her expertly decorated cube. Eat your heart out “Office Space”

What is your job at UA?
Officially: accounts payable. Woo-hoo, go accounting! Unofficially: Matt Ward's assistant, event coordinator, accounts receivable and...overall spender of UA funds. (I purchase all office, janitorial and kitchen supplies, as well as handle all corporate donations.)

How did you get your job at UA?
I signed up with a local temp agency, and this was my first ever temp job. They liked me so much they hired me before there was an actual job to be had. I had never even heard of Universal Audio before I started here.

Where did you grow up?
Columbia, South Carolina. Everyone always asks why I don't have an accent. I was born in Ohio, and even though I spent most of my life in the South, I lose the accent the moment I leave...unless I'm mad.

“The other bonus is Precious, Dave Crane's bulldog that works in the marketing department! She may snarfle all over all of my stuff, but I still love her!”

How did you end up in Santa Cruz?
I moved out here to be with my boyfriend, who's from the Bay Area. I know, it's terribly sweet

What do you like most about your job?
The people! It's such a neat work environment to be surrounded by so many smart and talented people. Everyone here is really mellow and fun. It's cool to wake up and be happy that you're going to work...Hmm, except Wednesdays. I hate Wednesday's. Plus, everybody here seems to have some weird or interesting talent. You never know what they're going to say or do, and it keeps you on your toes. The other bonus is Precious, Dave Crane's bulldog that works in the marketing department! She may snarfle all over all of my stuff, but I still love her!

What do you like the least?
Right now, I would have to say my stapler. It keeps jamming.

What are your hobbies?
I think anyone here would say, "What isn't my hobby?" I love reading, art, writing, volunteering, music and playing with anything fuzzy. I'm pretty big into sports too. I'm one of the pitchers for the rockin' and solidly defeated UA softball team, and I play a pretty intense indoor soccer game.

Do you have a favorite Santa Cruz moment?
I'm going to go with the midnight showing of the Lost Boys with a Q&A with Corey Feldman. I'm a total child of the '80s, even though I was a child in the '80s, so to get to see him in person and hear him talking about the filming of it here in Santa Cruz was pretty cool. Plus, The Lost Boys was one of my favorite movies growing up. I was certain that I was going to marry Kiefer Sutherland someday, and I used to watch it over and over again. I could probably recite most of it from memory. So, yeah, definitely one of my favorite Santa Cruz moments!

Tracy demonstrates a rare form of Toe-Sock-Flip-Flop Kung Fu

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Upcoming Events...

NAMM
Universal Audio is looking forward to seeing everyone at the 2006 NAMM show in Anaheim California, January 19-22.

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Producer/Artist Gossip. . .

119th AES Convention
During the first week of October, UA's Sales and Marketing Department flew to New York to work our booth at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention. Four days of exhibiting, plus break down and setup, can be exhausting but the gang found some extra energy for nighttime events.

Media maven Marsha Vdovin and Senior Product Manager, Greg Westfall, are perky and fresh on setup day.

The Universal Audio booth at AES

Panasonic Car Audio hosted a private party at the historic nightclub CBGBs to celebrate the release of the Talking Heads catalog in 5.1 surround. Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison and longtime engineer E.T. Thorngren dredged up the master tapes and remixed eight albums in 5.1 for release on DVD-A this month by Rhino Records.

Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison (left) and UA’s Will Shanks celebrate at CBGBs.

Universal Audio held a cocktail party for press and dealer/distributors at Stratosphere Sound, a beautiful new studio in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Stratosphere recently hosted recording and mixing sessions for a new Depeche Mode album.

Universal Audio’s Directress of Sales, Erica McDaniel with engineer/mixer Nathaniel Kunkel

Universal Audio was a gold sponsor of the TEC Awards, and the LA-610 was nominated but lost in the preamp category. Nevertheless, the UA crew managed to enjoy their rubber chicken dinner as well as the ceremony. A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to producer Arif Mardin by longtime Atlantic Records Chief Ahmet Ertegun.

David Byrne was awarded the Les Paul Award, but could not attend the event, so Laurie Anderson accepted the award from Les Paul on his behalf.

Legendary Producer Elliot Mazer and his wife, engineer Diana Haig, enjoyed the TEC awards.

Tech Talk. . .

Apple has announced the release of new G5 computers. We want our customers to know that UA is committed to supporting the Apple Macintosh platform, and any developments in our UAD product line will reflect that commitment.

UA is committed to the Apple Macintosh platform and any developments in the UAD product line will reflect that. We are constantly monitoring trends in computer technology, DSP and developments in bus/interface formats and therefore UA is already well-aware of PCI-Express (also known as PCIe) and ExpressCard. For those customers that are not certain, PCIe is a new and completely different form factor from PCI and PCI-X, and PCIe is not backwards compatible with any PCI/PCI-X cards. The UAD-1 will ONLY work in PCI and PCI-X slots.

We have no new UAD product announcements at the current time, but will of course keep our customers informed of planned developments for the UAD product line as soon as we have any major news. In the meantime, we recommend that any customers wanting to use a UAD-1 PCI card with a current Apple G5 machine select their still available PCI-X model G5: Power Mac G5 2.7GHz (PCI-X)
Part Number: M9749LL/A

If current UAD-1 users absolutely need to interface to PCIe, there are a number of third party products available including those below.

• Magma PCI Express® to PCI Expansion Link
  
• SBS Seven-slot PCI Express to PCI-X Expansion System

For more information, please read our UAD-1 Macintosh G5 Compatibility page.

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News & Shmooze. . .

AES Prize Drawing
One of the many and, possibly, more fun activities going on at the Universal Audio booth at the recent AES convention in New York City was the daily drawing for a UAD-1 Project PAK, Studio PAK and an Ultra PAK. Starting at about 1:30 p.m. every day, the already large crowds at the UA booth would begin to increase in size and energy, leading up to the 2:00 p.m. drawing.
The winners are listed below, along with some photos of the lucky few. As you can tell by the smiles, we made some people very happy while we were in NYC.

John Nowland Picks up a Dozen 2192s for Pegi Young Project

Recording engineer John Nowland (kneeling) with UA President Matt Ward (left) and CEO/Co-Founder Bill Putnam Jr.

Recording engineer John Nowland, a regular fixture at Neil Young's Broken Arrow Ranch in Woodside, California, stopped by to pick up a 12-pack of Universal Audio 2192 converters for Pegi Young's (Neil's wife) recording project. John first heard the 2192 when producer Elliot Mazer brought his personal units to the ranch for a project. John apparently liked them enough to drive down to UA's Santa Cruz offices and see if he could get 12 of them in the back of his Volvo wagon. While he was here, he picked up a UAD-1 Ultra Pak to spice up his Digital Performer-based Mac system and told us he can't wait to start using the Fairchild, Plate 140 and Pultec Pro plug-ins.

A 12-pack of Universal Audio 2192s at Neil Young's Broken Arrow Ranch

In addition to the Pegi Young project, John has been immersed in a massive archival project of the Neil Young catalog. There is an enormous library of Young's studio and live performances, and just sorting it all out is an impressive undertaking. Nowland told us that, while getting the catalog into his DAW so he can quickly audition a particular version of particular song has been invaluable, he's really looking forward to being able to improve these rough mixes with his new UAD-1 Ultra Pak.

Michael Brecker