| 2012 | |
 | NAMM Anaheim Visiting Mickey |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Old friends, new friends. |
 | Audio Days Paris Meet the makers |
2011 | |
 | Fifth anniversary Time to party! |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Less trouble, more fun. |
 | Unicorn or time travel? The Joel Hamilton interview |
 | AES New York Welcome back. |
2010 | |
 | Question upon question : )~ The pan60 interview |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Five already? |
 | Forward or backward On compressor topologies |
 | AES San Francisco Ghandi & the Giants |
2009 | |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Meet the family |
 | High-End Gear Hamburg Small yet Ooh-La-Laah |
 | AES New York Jazz, Viruses & Liberty |
2008 | |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt One, two, three... |
 | Demotour London London calling elysia! |
 | AES San Francisco Californiaaaaaaaaaa!!! |
2007 | |
 | Direct Metal Mastering On visit at Stockfisch-Records |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Second sighting, twice as good |
 | AES Vienna Compressor Boys versus Kaiserschmarrn |
 | Chemical Brothers The brothers gonna work it out! |
 | AES New York We love New York! |
 | High-End Gear Cologne Meeting of the pro audio freaks |
2006 | |
 | How everything started The alpha compressor and how it entered ... |
 | Musikmesse Frankfurt Premiere in Frankfurt/Main |
 | AES Paris Baguette and class-A |
 | Emergency Compressor First aid for dynamic disasters |
 | AES San Francisco elysia tours the United States |
High-End Gear Cologne
Meeting of the pro audio freaks
Whaaaaaaaat? A pro audio conference, virtually in our front yard, without us even knowing a single thing about it? Well, that had to be changed. And it had to be changed quickly. The answer to this mystery: The High-End Gear in Cologne from October 25th to 27th took place for the very first time. Showtime again!
Let's just start with the guy who was crazy enough to organize the whole thing more or less as a one man show: Tom Jansen, here together with his dad who was a great help in making it all possible. Thumbs up, Tom! This was really a very successful debut...
And coming next we have another cheerful duo: Jürg Vogt from VOVOX and Kai Sowka from S.E.A. Distribution. Obviously they checked some weird stuff out (I mean the music). The sound is enhanced by Jürg's Klangleiter cables; this much is easy to see. No, to hear!
But not only the technical equipment alone, but also how to use it correctly was a central theme of the High-End gear. A good number of interesting workshops were offered to bring some light into this - for example the great seminar by Fab Dupont from New York.
Looks perfect: Gearslutz moderator George Necola and Ruben come out as the Tough Boys of the entire conference and proudly show off the pro audio cowboy look. The corresponding weapons are located on the left: the mpressor and alpha compressor as a dangerous stack. Pull!
Mikael Vest from Digital Audio Denmark presents his high end converters. Later that day, we had a nice dinner together with Nils Hahrmann and discussed the future of music distribution. And yeah, we had a very nice steak on top of that, too. A good day!
Another prominent workshop host: Commissioner Gordon from New Jersey. His credits feature 50 Cent, Lauryn Hill, Damien Marley, Whitney Houston, Joss Stone, Jay-Z etc. - a massive basis for explaining different approaches to production techniques.
Ulf Ronneberger from Sweetspot Music in the heart of his "mobile recording mobile". I'm sorry, Ulf, I was not really wide awake when we met... But on top of all that gear, Ulf mercifully had that most important piece of equipment, too: the coffee machine. And that really saved my day.
Our friend André Inderfurth from SPL poses with the Passeq. Dude, next time you'll stay with us in Cologne, right? The closing food fight at MC Donalds was a good start for this, in a way, wasn't it? (Well, in reality we were completely peaceful and downright ideal customers).
It was a great pleasure to see Andy VanDette from Masterdisk again after having met him at our New York demo tour for the first time. Andy is a true audio business dinosaur, and so his workshop revealed lots of interesting and useful information.
By a strange coincidence the next guy here has already installed the dream combination of the alpha and the TMC in his own studio: Kai Blankenberg from Skyline Tonfabrik in Düsseldorf. This all makes me think that one should really consider offering these two units as a nice bundle ;-)
Left to right: Stefan Bahr from United Minorities and Anne Goerth from Metric Halo. In front we see the corresponding gear: a couple of MH converters and the low end extension to Stefan's Ginko monitor speakers (not viewable in the picture).
Another workshop with Andreas Herbig, JEM and Bionade Holunder. I have to say that the "Boogieman" was everything else but frightening, though, but very relaxed and humorous. In the background, the impressive Surrountec monitor builds the skyline for this scenario.
Stefan Heger from Dangerous Music has an absolutely incredible trick up his sleeve: Automatic synchronization of his eyelids with the trigger of my camera! Here is just a small selection of photographic evidences. This man is tight and therefore should become a drummer.
I can do that, too, thinks Kai. Or is he simply tired from all that conference madness? Time to have a closer look: Sascha "Busy" Bühren from True Busyness has already finished his coffee, but Kai hasn't. Anyway, Sascha was definitely fit enough for his workshop on stem mastering!
Last but in no way least, two congenial birds close this report: Uli Apel from Apelton (in front) and Dirk Jambor from Jambor Audio. If you met these guys together as a double feature, you will definitively not have to worry about the fun factor. See you soon!