Picture of the raffle winner
The meeting started off at 8:02 PM with Ben Tompkins going into his background with
Blue and his many years of experience and introducing Tyler, a CRAS grad. He then
went around the group and the students attending introduced themselves with who we
are and what we want to do. He told us that he grew up in California and went to school
there before he got signed by putting a demo out that was not well received but he
came in contact with System of a Down and ended up touring with them for a while
before he decided to go to college for music business and business. After graduating he
applied at Line 6 and worked for a while before he changed paths and started working
for a, then, small company named Blue where he moved up to managing sales for many
states.
He then dove into the presentation about how Blue got started in 1995 in Los Angeles,
California. The founders were experts in vintage microphones and knew how powerful a
microphone could be. Today the ideas used by Blue are came up with in meetings with
people who have a passion. The products that are created get segmented into studio,
live, and CE (USB) so it's easier to get out there to the right people. One of their
creators was playing softball and thought that a softball would be an interesting design
concept for a mic when it was brought to his attention and that lead to the creation of
the snowball that lead to the creation of the Yeti. Lots of opportunities have been
opened up since then. They attend a lot of shows like CES and Musikmesse and that
opens even more opportunities. We talked about some of their specific mics like Bottle
mics that are popular in the industry with the interchangeable heads and warm sound.
The Blueberry is their first production microphone that brings what your recording
forward and it was the mic that put them on the map. The Dragonfly works well for
overheads when you're looking for a sparkling tone that can also deliver more body to
the sound. We got to hear fun creation stories and give ideas for new products.
The floor was opened up to questions and there was a lot of interest in the idea of a
company thats known for mics going into headphone designs. They were asked about
their portable USB mics and we learned how they have to consider things like typing
noise. They think the most difficult thing to design for them is their headphones because
of all the things that go into it and all the small things like cords. The Yeti was decided to
be the most bang for your buck as far as the consumer mics go because it's versatile.
The meeting came to an end at 9:50pm.
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