Andres Mayo in Mexico City's ARTeria during his workshop on Mastering. Photo Niza Sopeña
Last 24 & 25 May we had our first two day workshop, the one that had to be cancelled during our annual Educational Program, due to health reasons of our good friend, Andrés Mayo. Luckily he is fully recovered and he could accommodate his agenda with ours and programmed this workshop. To take full advantage of his visit to Mexico City from Argentina, we scheduled our monthly conference program with him as well.
The workshop entitled "Specialized Training in Mastering" was a complete success and we even had to raise the number of admissions. ARTeria was the chosen location, as it is a comfortable auditorium with good sound and video equipment. Above all, the director is a good friend and supporter of AES as well. Kindly let us make use of their auditorium paying a minimal fee to cover for their operational expenses.
Andrés asked us for some specific equipment, centered in a TC 6000M, for the ease of operation and sonic quality, but all the time considering that many of the attendees would not have access to such a piece of equipment, his talk was focused in the practical results when using this or that parameter or process that can be found in other equipment (s).
Firstly, he began making the audience conscious of how monitoring is the most important thing to consider and how to compensate for deficiencies, even in a room that is absolutely not designed for professional audio requirements. Then, the equipment chosen was explained and why he likes to use such a signal chain, with the TC and the ProTools as main performers.
Many examples of poorly recorded material were processed as in any "real life" situation, explaining the different process and the result expected.
The audience was asked to bring samples they had worked on so they could easily understand the benefits of a mastering session and how to achieve such results.
Unfortunately not all the power of the TC could be demonstrated due to lack of some licenses that unfortunately never arrived, but having some plug-ins installed in the ProTools helped Andrés to accomplish his requirements.
We are grateful to ARTeria and Jose Enrique Fernández; Vari, Hugo Patiño and Adrian Zamudio for helping and lending us equipment and technology. Also to Distribuidora Gonher for their support with the TC 6000.
