Sweetwater Internship Post 6 - 3/24/2021

Interesting and exciting things continue to materialize at Sweetwater studios! I spend so much time at Sweetwater every day that I've learned a ton about the company and all the things that go on inside that make the company successful. For example, I've been spending some time helping out in the Sales Reference Center (SRC). To put it simply, the SRC is a sort of library where employees of Sweetwater can check out items from a wide selection of music gear. For sales engineers and vendors, this is a very important amenity because in order for a sales engineer to fully understand the products they sell, it is crucial to have hands-on experience with the product. In another situation, there may be a customer calling in regard to an issue they are having with their product. The Sweetwater employee could go to the lending library and check out that same piece of gear in order to help determine how to fix the issue. In the studio's perspective, we have the opportunity to rent out any kind of microphone or piece of outboard gear to use with recordings that we're working on. If there's a piece of gear we don't have, we just walk across the building and check what we need out of the SRC! The "librarian" for the SRC has needed some help moving things around recently which is why I've gotten some experience there, and it's been really fun because she's allowed me to look around at all the different pieces of gear on the shelves.

Back at the studios, I witnessed a really cool process that I had never seen before, and one which I consider to be a huge testament to how far technology has come. In the studio, we have I gorgeous glossy-black Yamaha grand piano. However, this piano is not any ordinary piano, because it can do much more than just hit strings with hammers. Underneath this piano lies a ton of cool technology which allows the piano to do several different tasks such as playing songs by itself, recording said songs to be played by itself, playing songs off of a CD, and even performing MIDI information! Recently, a client wanted some live piano to be recorded onto a song he had been writing, but he only had the MIDI information written, and no grand piano of his own to record. So he decided to hire one of our engineers to use the Yamaha to record live sound via MIDI. In order for this to work, the engineer had to run MIDI out of ProTools, into a patch bay in the control room which ran out into the isolation booth where the piano was positioned, then into the piano which would then play the music that would be picked up by two Schoeps small-diaphragm condensers that would send the audio signal back into the control room. Now, I understand that if you don't know much about audio then all of that was probably gibberish to you, so all you really need to know is that the computer was playing the piano as well as recording the sound coming from the piano, and that's pretty awesome!

*The Schoeps used to record the piano are not shown in this picture, however this is the piano I am referring to*

So far, I had not had the opportunity to share any footage of the recording process in our studios. This week I was able to change that! I'm going to disclose the title and artist of this song for confidentiality purposes, but this is what it looks like when we record with some members of the house band in the live room:

Both the bass and the Wurlitzer are being recorded through DIs which is why you can't hear them over the drums. This is for isolation purposes in order to get a better sounding mix down the line. We have several sessions like this throughout each week that I get the privilege of taking part in, and it's always entertaining!

To finish off yet another Sweetwater internship blog post, I'd like to share a ribbon microphone that I had the pleasure of admiring here. Ocean Way Audio recently came out with the RM1-B active ribbon microphone. Today, I got to have an up-close look at the 52nd off the line, and let me tell you that it truly looks (and feels) different in-person. Seeing a picture of this microphone, it doesn't look like much, but once you hold one of these in your hand, you'll see that Ocean Way certainly doesn't sacrifice quality for anything! The RM1-B's chassis and most of the internals are solid metal, adding up to a total 7.5 lbs of microphone! It's so heavy that you have to ensure that your microphone stand will hold it before you put it on, or else it may break your stand, or even worse, the microphone.

Nevertheless, this design truly is elegant and modern. One particular thing that stuck out to me is that the grilles on either side seem like they are made of metal in photos, but are actually a kind of fabric mesh. This feature is for an added bit of pop-filtering, which I find quite unique on a microphone like this. Nonetheless, the microphone itself sounds fantastic, and I certainly encourage you to give it a listen. As usual, there's more coming up in the world of Sweetwater Studios, so stay tuned for more!