First of all, how would you describe TLS? Who is it intended for and what is the process?
Well, so far The Listening Sessions allows people to listen to audio clips of mics and mic pres. We have free MP3s available on the web and are soon releasing CDs and DVD-As. The audience is anyone who is in my position, in that they're not near any major gear store or don't have a chance to try out all of the gear available. Even when I lived in New York City and could audition a lot of gear in the studio, it still didn't even scratch the surface. I do agree, ultimately, with the people who say that you have to try the gear in your studio for your applications — there's no substitute for doing that. But the fact of the matter is there is a majority of the audio gear-buying market that simply can't do that. Sure, you can order a couple of pieces from some of the retailers, try them out and return the one you don't want, but even before you do that you have to figure out which ones you want to audition. Who can round up a collection of over 30 budget large condenser mics or over 40 pairs of small condenser mics or 50 mic preamps, and listen to all of them? TLS is not any kind of final word. It's intended for someone who just wants to get a general idea of the particular sonic character gear might have, and it's for the person actively looking to make a purchase. Jeff Costa and I have been handling the engineering and Brian McKenzie has been there for most of the sessions — either playing, cheerleading or just listening. Working on TLS is a completely different beast than regular music recording sessions. Setting up 30+ mics or a bunch of preamps, and tracking a 30 or 40-second "piece" has more involved with it than you'd think. We learn as we go, and we're now quite a few sessions into TLS. I think we're up to about 15 sessions so far.
How did the idea for TLS come about?
It wasn't really an idea, more of an extension of a need. I started out as a contributing editor at Digital Pro Sound, reviewing gear and writing articles. I ran into a new local studio, Sea Note Recording, and asked owner Rob Gainer if he'd be up for trying out some new gear. A bunch of people showed up: engineers, other studio owners, singers, musicians — and what happened got recorded and burned to CD. I ripped the tracks to MP3 and posted them at an undeveloped web site. Two weeks after that page had been up I checked the stats and there were over 20,000 hits. So, I came up with the name for The Listening Sessions, and started the TLS web site in late December of 2002.
