Congratulations Sartaria MS and Beckendorff JH Orchetras

This is a very proud moment for us in the studio!
Sartartia MS Orchestra is the Honor Orchestra in the String Category and Beckendorff JH Orchestra is the honor orchestra in the Full Orchestra category! West Side was part of the recording process as partners in their success! This is unprecedented in the history of West Side to have 2 Honor Orchestras earn the titles.

These schools have been selected from all the entries in entire state. The state of Texas stands as one of the best places for music education in the nation. Great teachers at both schools have been tirelessly working to teach these kids what they need to know. Ann Victor and Courtenay Vandiver at Sartartia MS and Matt Porter and Susan Steber at Beckendorff JH have to take most of the credit. This also should reflect the parent's support of their children in the pursuit of music education. These two schools are 13.4 miles apart and are in 2 different school districts. Sartartia MS is in Fort Bend ISD while Beckendorff MS is located in Katy ISD.

Honorable mention goes to another West Side client, Cook MS Band, under the direction of Michael Dick, was awarded 5th in state. His first year as a head director!

Tan Truong was the chief engineer at the recordings of the concerts.
Jonathan Lafferty assisted at the Sartartia MS concert recording.

We like to use Neumann KM83 and KM183 microphones for orchestral recordings.
Sytek Microphone preamps
Canare Cable
RME UFX microphone pre/AD converter/computer interface.

RME-UFX Review

The newest member of the RME lineup is the UFX. This is more than just another interface, it is an incredible high end interface for your daw and great as a stand alone mixer/pre.

We have one in the studio and all I can say is wow! This unit has transformed the way I work and has taken the quality of our recordings up. The internal clock is super accurate which contributes to the units transparent AD/DA conversion. I was using an Apogee Rosetta before and this unit easily makes my Rosetta an optional item now, while it was once the go to converter.
The bass seems fuller and the midrange is smoother, while the highs are silky. The built in preamps are insanely transparent while adding incredible resolution I have never heard before. I was told these preamps resemble Millenia preamps. One thing the preamps have that I have never heard of before is parallel A/D conversion. There are 2 converters per channel. I guess it is supposed to add to the accuracy of the conversion. The pres are ultra clean and for vocals, I still rely on my Sytek with Burr Brown op amps to my Avalons and DBX compressors to power my Neumann M147 tube microphone. Changing the chain changes the color of the sound. I really think I am hearing more clarity and resolution in the audio path than ever before.

The usb connection is rock solid. The low latency of the UFX over USB is incredibly stable. It is now possible to record 96Khz at the lowest latency with no problems.

I have used the UFX as a stand alone device and the interface's ability to recall up to 6 presets is amazing. The different reverbs onboard are very good and sound very natural. The eq, compression, auto gain, is very nice. There is a dsp meter located on the display and I have never pushed it to even 1/4 of a full load.

If you are in the market, these units are incredible and those who recognize the value and quality that is packed inside this unit will buy one asap!
Did I mention it works great with Cubase 5, ad Pro Tools 9

Newbie

This is my first post ever on any blog. West Side rules....

FIL AM Superstar video sample

We recently shot the first Fil Am Superstar contest at the Stafford Civic Center and switched it live and shot simultaneously to HD on the cameras. Jason Allison on the switcher, David Graves on Camera 2 8ft (Kessler crane), Jonathan Kinsey on camera 3(wide), and me on Camera 1 (12' crane)

Houston Hearts Haiti

Ren Patrick (16 year old singer/songwriter) and Ian Crawford (Panic! At the Disco) teamed up to write "Better in Time" for a charity called Houston Hearts Haiti. I produced, engineered, and mixed this awesome song.
Check out the YouTube video!

Cinco Ranch Symphony wins Honor Orchestra!

West Side Recording Studio is proud to announce that the Cinco Ranch Junior High Symphony Orchestra, from Cinco Ranch Junior High in Katy, is selected to perform at the Texas Music Educators Association convention from a recording we did for them last spring. This is not an easy feat. The orchestra must perform at the highest level and the recording must also be of the highest quality. We are proud to be part of this achievement!

Drobo in the House!!

West Side Recording Studio has decided to stop playing with fire and began to get responsible with backup with the DROBO. It is an automated robot that will automatically configure any size hard disk drive I put in it and create a way of keeping my data from falling victim to hard drive failure. This is fully automated and requires no special software. The lights tell you when to put a larger drive in or when it has failed. You can pop out the drive while the unit is still on and replace it without shutting down the computer. I will look into getting the Drobo share, a gigabit lan adapter that will let me share the Drobo over the network! Perhaps in the future, there will be an 8 drive version that is called the Drobo pro and it is an iSCSI interface. What that means is multi-user, video editing over the gigabit lan without upgrading what we already have! Very Cool!

Did I mention it is very quiet? I got it on ebay for about $350.00 and saved some money. It is a usb connection and installed very quickly. These things don't come with drives unless you pay extra. I have 2.6 TB installed and have 1.4 Tb of free space. That loss of drive space means I am protected with some sort of redundancy across all the drives.

You should stop talking about it and get one!