Saturday Night Live anniversary sound
Marking five decades of late-night Saturday Night Live TV show, SNL50: The Homecoming Concert was staged audiences at the Radio City Music Hall theater in New York City.
Joel Singer, co-founder of M3, and his team, were responsible for sound for this historic event: ‘This was a massive production, not only in terms of the artist line-up but also from a technical perspective. We had to accommodate a vast number of sources and deliver an impeccable mix. Lawo consoles were central to making that happen,’ he says.
Sound designer Mike Bedford from Hoare Lea called on Out Board’s TiMax SoundHub and Meyer Sound loudspeakers to provide immersive live audio playback and 3D spatialisation in the UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan World Expo.
With two MPG Mixer of the Year awards under his belt, music producer/mixer/engineer Cenzo Townshend opened the doors on his Decoy Studios in late 2014. The move follows time at London’s Trident in the 1980s, work with Ian Broudie and then Stephen Street at The Bunker in Olympic Studios.
Your last recording session may have used virtual mics and outboard. The guitar amps, as well as mic positioning, may have been similarly virtual. Alternatively, you may have been placing real mics around a live band before settling down in the control room. Something a bit more ‘real’.
English-born producer/engineer Adam Moseley got his start at London’s Trident Studios, where he worked with the likes of Phil Ramone, Tom Dowd, Mutt Lange and Steve Lillywhite. Now settled in Downtown Los Angeles, he operates a studio, owns the Accidental Muzik label and is an instructor at UCLA.
Called the Infinite Cave because of its size, Son Doong is among the world’s biggest caves. Recently, photo journalist Martin Edström led a team that photographed it and recorded the sounds occurring inside it.
Coming at sound from very different directions, two UK art galleries recently put audio at the forefront of an installation – each making use of contrasting interpretations of sound zoning.
Claiming to be the first orchestra to ‘go fully digital’, the Lille National Orchestra (ONL) is using a digital signal chain from sound pick-up to recording. 
Opened in 1999 to host the Rugby World Cup, Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium has since seen a range of sports events, as well as concerts from the likes of the Manic Street Preachers, U2 and The Rolling Stones staged under its retractable roof.
While cylinders for Edison’s phonograph were the world’s first consumer music format in the late 1880s, the first music chart preceded them by around 50 years. Having originally represented sheet music sales, the music charts have tracked delivery formats through vinyl, cassette and CD to digital downloads.
‘When we started in 1973, there were no loudspeakers, there were no mixers, there were no radio mics, there were no miniature mics that were made specifically for theatre use,’ recalls Autograph Sound Recording’s Andrew Bruce.