Each month we award the Community Member Of The Month Award sponsored by Sonnox. This award goes to the individual, who in the judges opinion, made an ongoing contribution to the Pro Tools Expert community. This month we have awarded it to Justin Arey who also runs the Eleven Rack Presets site.
Justin has been passionate about recording since high school when he recorded bands on his Tascam Porta One 4-track in his hometown of Scarsdale, New York. A guitar player and songwriter, he studied Journalism at Boston University, and played with his band “The Dudes,” around campus with musicians he’d recruit from the Berklee College of Music around the corner. He then moved to San Francisco’s East Bay where he joined his older brother Scott in a rock band called “The Particles.” In the late 90’s Justin met acclaimed recordist Fred Jones and started his first community web site to support the Panasonic DA7 mixing console that Fred helped design. In November 2009, he started the site Eleven Rack Presets to support Eleven Rack users. “I believe it’s the users that make a great community site, I just used my talents as a web developer to create a meeting place online, the 4000+ presets all came from the community.” Now living in Portland, Oregon Justin records local bands and his own music in his home basement recording studio that he built himself and has equipped with Pro Tools 12 HD Native.
“Being able to take the sound in my head and achieve it in the recording studio is the greatest challenge. It is the greatest gift. My deepest thanks to Russ, Mike, James and the whole crew at Pro Tools Expert for their dedication to helping me and so many others become better at their craft.
As to choosing which Sonnox plug-in as my prize, that is a tough one because I’ve heard them, I know what they can do, but don’t currently own any of them. So I want them all! But to only pick one, I’d have to say The Sonnox Oxford Limiter would be my choice because of its world-renowned transparency and ability to add “thickness” on the master buss as well as individual instruments. Thank you Sonnox! I’ll be so tempted to buy the Elite Collection!"