The Mic to Monitor Tour, presented by Prism Sound, brings informative audio workshops hosted by pro audio experts to the UK and US. For the 2017 USA tour, our very own Director of Educational Services, Steve Savanyu was on hand at every stop presenting a “Microphones and Applications” seminar. Didn’t get a chance to catch the tour in your city? Never fear, Steve was kind enough to provide a recap of the tour! Each Mic to Monitor Tour date featured four seminars:

1. An overview of setting up acoustic treatments for a small studio control room by Glenn Kuras, President of GIK Acoustics.
2. Fundamentals of microphones used for recording / live sound with a heavy focus on recording. Along with Q&A session that answered questions about a variety of miking solutions.
3. Jody Thorne of Prism Audio discussed A/D converters and the effects of not having a good clock source for the studio can degrade the digital signal.
4. Tim Cuthbertson discussing how to evaluate studio monitors and compare them to other types of loudspeakers.

Each session also had a guest engineer who talked about his career and experience in recording.

Saturday, March 25^th - Webster University’s AES Student Summit – St. Louis, Missouri

The Webster University event was held as part of the AES Student Summit, I did the presentation portion along with a hands-on drum and vocal miking clinic. The students listened to several different types of mics on the same source and compared how they sounded. The special guest at this event was Steve Nye, who had worked with Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry. Steve also participated in the hands-on miking sessions. The Webster University tour date was a full day event, allowing for a lot more hands-on student engagement. A few lucky students took home prizes like the AT2035 and ATH-M40x headphones during the Webster Student Mix Competition.

 Tuesday, March 28^th - Ball State University – Muncie, Indiana

At Ball State University we did two sessions, one in the early afternoon for students and an evening session for students and local audio professionals. Mastering Engineer Bob Katz presented his “Food for Thought: Truth’s Explained and Myths Exposed” seminar explaining about how signal levels in modern music can be deceptive to a crowd of over one hundred people.

 Wednesday, March 29^th - Chicago SAE – Chicago, Illinois

The tour moved on to SAE Chicago where we did an afternoon/evening session similar to the one in Ball State. Our guest engineer was Danny Leake who has worked with Kanye West, Sting and is currently the live sound/studio engineer for Stevie Wonder.

Thursday, March 30^th - University of Michigan School of Music – Ann Arbor, Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan welcomed us with pouring rain, but that didn’t keep us from the U of M School of Music! We did a single evening session with Collin Dupuis, Producer/Engineer for the Wallflowers, Black Keys, and Cage the Elephant, among others.

 Friday, March 31^st - Cuyahoga Community College – Cleveland, Ohio

The tour came to a close on home turf, at Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) where local Grammy winning engineer Paul Blakemore provided the keynote speech. Paul is with the Telarc Records group of Concord Music and does a lot of contemporary instrumental and jazz recording, which ties in well with the Tri-C’s annual Cleveland Jazz Fest. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to attend the Mic to Monitor events. We hope you left each event armed with knowledge you can implement in the studio and beyond.