25th Annual TEC Award Winners Announced at AES
The Technical Excellence and Creativity Awards celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York with a presentation that featured a tribute to the late Les Paul.
The Technical Excellence and Creativity Awards celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York with a presentation that featured a tribute to the late Les Paul.
Bob Ludwig and Phil Ramone
In the Technical Achievement categories, Avid Digidesign won awards for both the ProTools 8 (Workstation Technology) and Venue Mix Rack System (Sound Reinforcement Console); Solid State Logic received awards for both the SSL Matrix (Small Format Console) and the AWS 900+ SE (Large Format Console); and Universal Audio won with the 710 Twin-Finity (Microphone Preamplifier Technology) and UAD-2 Quad (Signal Processing/Hardware).
First-time Technical Achievement winners included iZotope for the Ozone 4 Mastering Suite (Signal Processing/Software) and Nagra for the Nagra VI (Recording Devices).
Among the winners for Creative Achievement were the product teams behind Coldplay’s Viva La Vida (awarded for both Record Production/Sing and Record Production/Album); Foo Fighters’ Live at Wembley Stadium (Surround Sound Production); JVC Newport Jazz Festival (Remote Production/Recording or Broadcast); the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Raising Sand tour (Tour Sound); James Taylor, One Man Band (Television Sound); and The Dark Knight (Film Sound); as well as the designers of Santa Barbara’s Playback Recording Studio (Studio Design).
The award for Interactive Entertainment Sound Production, sponsored by the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) went to Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.
The TEC Awards’ 25th anniversary was hosted by Chris Stone, founder of Record Plant, World Studio Group, Penteo Surround and co-founder of SPARS. The ceremony’s presenters featured past Hall of Fame inductees: remote engineer David Hewitt; engineer/producer Eddie Kramer; engineer and technologist George Massenburg; and producer/engineer Phil Ramone. The presenter team also included six-time TEC Award-winning architect/acoustician John Storyk of the Walters-Storyk Design Group.
The presentation featured a video tribute to the late Les Paul, pioneer of multitrack recording and the solid-body electric guitar, followed by a speech from George Petersen, audio history authority and executive editor of Mix magazine.
