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Posted on 02/08/2008 8:46:52 PM PST by Swordmaker
It takes a lot to put on a production on the scale of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards. To present the annual music industry honors to the attendees at Los Angeles’ Staples Center and to home viewers on CBS, show organizers use more than 450 microphones, 155 tons of lighting, 13,000 amps of power, 19 video screens, 94 speaker cabinets—and an endless amount of Macs.
You may have assumed that Macs played a large role in putting on what has become the largest audio production on television. But until you sit in on a rehearsal for the telecast, as audio engineers are hard at work mixing the 35 songs that will be performed during Sunday’s ceremony, and see how extensively Macs are involved in the process, it’s hard to fathom just how central the Mac has become to the Grammys.
Every piece of audio from the Grammy stage goes out to one of two remote mixing and recording trucks located behind the Staples Center. The main truck cost in the neighborhood of $750,000 to build, and it’s about as state-of-the-art a setup as you’re likely to encounter.
During Thursday’s rehearsal, it was easy to lose count of the number of Macs in the production truck. But there are 14 Macs on board, according to Joel Singer, audio engineer in charge for XM Production/Effanel. That includes MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, G5s, and a G4 capturing video from the stage. Singer said that the Grammy production team has always used Macs to produce the show’s audio, and it will continue to do so.
This pair of Macs are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the Mac hardware responsible for putting on Sunday’s Grammy ceremony.
“Windows frightens me to death,” said Singer. “I know it, and I know it well—that’s why we chose the Mac instead of Vista or XP.”
To make the Grammys sound even better for the viewing audience, Singer and his crew sonically duplicated the first truck and built a second mixing truck that sits right beside the first. When an artist comes on stage, audio mixers John Harris or Eric Schilling start working with the audio. When that song is done, one of them takes the mix settings from the Pro Tools setup on a thumb drive, along with a hard drive that has the audio, and head over to the second truck. While one person is over there, mixing the first song, the other remains in the first truck, starting to record the next rehearsal. When that’s done, then they switch places again.
Audio mixer Eric Schilling (seated) mixes one of the songs during rehearsals for Sunday’s final performance.
In the past, Singer says, mixes would only have a few short minutes between acts to mix the songs. The second production truck gives them more time to tweak the mix, getting it just right for the final show show. When an artist walks onstage to perform Sunday night, the crew in the truck are punching up the settings they worked on during the week, and everything is ready to go.
All of the mixing consoles are made by Digidesign, which makes the Pro Tools digital audio workstation. In fact, a lot of the gear used to produce the Grammys comes from Digidesign. That’s what the majority of the recording industry uses, says Hank Neuberger, supervisor of broadcast audio and recording academy advisor, so that’s what the Grammys broadcast uses, too.
An up-close look at one of the mixing consoles in one of the two mixing and recording trucks parked outside the Staples Center.
“The votes have been counted, and Pro Tools won,” Neuberger said. “Artists and engineers all bring us Pro Tools files—it’s ubiquitous in the industry. We need a platform that’s universal and that’s Pro Tools.”
Production work on the Grammys this year will go beyond what you see and hear on television. The first part of the 2008 ceremonies will be Webcast, so you can see all of the awards that aren’t typically televised. For Mac users, that can be a double-edged sword, especially when production companies skew toward Windows-based technologies. That won’t be a problem with the Grammys webcast.
“We are all Mac guys,” Neuberger said. “One of the highest priorities we had was to make sure the Webcast worked on Safari because our members are overwhelmingly Mac users.”
The 50th Grammy Awards takes place this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on CBS. (The West Coast gets a tape-delayed broadcast also airing at 8 p.m. local time.) The webcast kicks off at 4:00 p.m. Eastern.
Just the facts: The Grammy Awards Other fun facts about the Grammy Awards from the production team that puts the show together:
the media culture using macs? no!
I just bought a used PC for $25 with Pentium III. How much would a comparable Apple run?
Film Actors Guild,
Supports Macs.
News at 11.
There's a G3 iMac with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) on eBay for $26 currently, although shipping's extra unless you live near Englewood, Colorado.
Macs have always enjoyed a better resale value than PCs... so, let's see... what year was your Pentium III made? The earliest it could have come out was February 26, 1999, when Intel released the Pentium III.
A 350MHz - 450MHz G3 PowerMac Tower announced by Apple on January 5, 1999 and available for sale by February of that year, would probably bring around $100 to $150 now, according to everymac.com, a website that keeps stats on all Apple products and monitors current selling prices on eBay and other resale sites.
The Pentium III was discontinued in mid 2003... and a single processor 1.0GHz PowerMac G4, which was discontinued on June 9, 2003, would still bring between $750 and $850 today per everymac.
So, depending on when your $25 Pentium III was built, the comparable Apple Mac Tower would be between $100 and $850.
Does that answer your question? (My 1.6GHz G5 tower PowerMac which I bought in August of 2003 could still bring as much as $1100 ... pretty good retention of value since I paid $1799 for it!)
I compared tower PIII to tower G3/G4 configurations from the same period...
Or, middleaged iMacs...
Broadcast on using a Mac...
Forkin’ hypocrite energy wasters. That’s gotta be a huge carbon footprint. Losers. Hope they make everyone attending use one square per toilet visit (aka Crow’s Law).
Decommissioned Mk84 Bomb Fish Tank
Well, see, a computer like that in a Mac version is an antique, and therefore would probaly run you about $2000.00. I think Mac stopped making those right after WWII. (sorry, couldn't help it!)
I just bought a used PC for $25 with Pentium III. How much would a comparable Apple run?
With what monitor? My son is a PC man, and he did a take when he first saw my new 20" monitor and said, "That's a nice monitor!"Was/is that Pentium virus free? How hard/expensive is it to keep it that way?Do you pay more per month in internet access than you gave for your PC?
To me the point, as Swordmaker indicated, is not how cheap you can buy a used one but how well a new one will hold its value. I just gave my daughter my old 800MHz G4 which I had upgraded to Panther and .5 Gig of RAM. She is tickled with it. Loves the idea that she doesn't have the virus hassle. I just hated having to worry about viruses with my old 486 with its huge 2 Gig hard drive . . .
With all this talk of mixing audio you would almost think that the performers weren’t just lip-syncing. ; )
Okay, now, that one was just wrong. ;’)
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