Everyone who voted for the shortlist, chosen and voted by you, was entered into the prize daw to win one of nearly 40 prizes. Here are the second batch of winners of prizes from McDSP, Output, Angelbird, Puremix, Sonarworks & Universal Audio.
McDSP
Nino Jacobsen - Winner of a McDSP Everything DSP Pack
I live in Copenhagen and work as a supervising sound editor and sound re-recording mixer on motion pictures and TV shows. My studio is located at The Danish Film Studio. Last year I did 2 Films in Dolby Atmos and can only say that I love this format.
I am a heavy user of every sound tool there is and in a constant hunt for good sounding plug-ins. I am looking forward to try every McDSP plug, in particular SA-2 and AE400.
Mixing a film is for me climax of my sound work and it still astounds me how easily you can shape the story with the right choices. I feel that we still have a lot of land to conquer in shaping the sound for cinema and television.
Steve Cilurzo - Winner of a McDSP Everything Native Pack
I am a Voice Over Artist, Engineer, Producer and Director. My studio is located in Southern California, where I also create post production audio for Television, Film, Video and Radio. I'm also an award winning video editor. I just love the creative process. Anything that involves starting with a blank page and ending up with a polished masterpiece. Audio is my first love, because it's so subjective… and much harder than video, where what you see… is what you get. But with audio, the process involves so much more... to capture the ears of your audience... wrapping them in "feel good" tones, that captures the imagination and sets the stage of the mind.
I was truly thrilled to win a McDSP Everything Native Pack! Recently I bought the ML4000 Limiter and I love it… it gets used on everything I do! I also find the AE400 Active EQ to be very unique. The active EQ response is easy to adjust with the ratio control, because it determines how active each band will respond. Very nice… clean and transparent.
I'm really looking forward to exploring all the McDSP plug-ins. The SA-2 Dialog Processor will be useful on my voice over and commercial work. Having all these tools available will give me the ultimate plug-ins, to tackle what ever audio I may encounter. Thank you McDSP and Pro Tools Expert!
Thanks... Pro Tools Expect IS the first website I visit every morning over coffee as I start my day!
Universal Audio
Richard Weatherley - Winner of an Apollo Twin Interface
I’ve been involved in audio engineering for over 20 years - tracking and mixing music in genres such as rock, EDM, ambient, indie folk, funk and choral. I am based in Sydney, Australia and work with mostly domestic acts, located in equal part at major studios and my own studio, Pagewood Sound. I track and mix on Pro Tools HDX 12. As with most sound guys, I have accumulated an inappropriately large amount of gear, ranging from Neve and SSL to Telefunken, Pulse Techniques and Barefoot Sound.
Increasingly I am being asked to record "in the field". This can be anything from a bedroom, a high-ceilinged sitting room, a rehearsal room, a club or a large unconventional space. In order to accommodate these requirements, I now have a second Pro Tools rig based on a MacBook Pro. The Universal Audio Apollo Twin is the perfect interface for this second rig - it will provide the portability, high-quality preamps and the software compatibility that I need.
PureMix
Dave Pindara - Winner of an 12 month PureMix Subscription
I’m a musician/composer in the beautiful midwest of the USA. While I started as a touring, recording musician, I stepped away from music for a digital art career in the wonderful world of video games. Returning back to music, Pro Tools Expert has been an extremely valuable resource of knowledge for software, hardware and process on all things Pro Tools. I’m lucky enough to have experienced the analog recording world, the digital recording revolution and now the quest to bring the sounds of the former out of the latter. It’s a great time for creating music! I am currently tracking for a new project.
Like learning a musical instrument, learning the recording, mixing and mastering side is an art all to itself. I have always walked away with better understanding and insight into music production from the work of Fab and Ben, and now I can look forward to continued learning with everything that PureMix has to offer. The more you know…
Edwin Hurwitz - Winner of an 12 month PureMix Subscription
I've been playing music since my mom started teaching me recorder at the age of 5 in the mid 60s. That led to clarinet, piano, and finally oboe. Then, in junior high school I discovered the electric bass. My friends and I started a band and wanted to make a recording. Since we were broke, and it was the 70s, we had to cobble together some rudimentary gear, bouncing from cassette deck to cassette deck with all kinds of jerry rigged gear, but it set me on a lifelong path of being fearless with a microphone and a soldering iron. Eventually, I ended up at the Berklee College of Music, finishing with the first class of Music Production and Engineering graduates. The next 10 years were spent working as an engineer in studios around Boston, MA, alternating with touring as a bass player around the United States, mostly with seminal jam/funk band, Shockra, playing gigs alongside Phish, Widespread Panic, and other bands that would go on to define a certain sound and scene.
When I moved to Colorado in 1995, I decided I didn't want to get distracted from bass playing, so I didn't tell anyone about being an engineer. However, when the Avid Digi 001 came out, I had to get one and scratch the recording itch. My goal at that point was to do location recording. I knew that I didn't want to get involved in the politics of owning a studio and the logistics of trying to keep it booked. I gradually built up a small business doing location recording around Colorado, recording everything from string quartets to live hip hop in the nascent Denver acid jazz scene. I finally hit the road again in 2007 with Americana band Great American Taxi, and put recording aside for the next few years.
After deciding I wanted to sleep in my own bed on a more regular basis, I decided to try something completely different and at the age of 50, decided to go to law school. Perhaps my timing wasn't great, as Taxi went into the studio months later with Don Was in Nashville and I just got to hear about it in emails sent to me while I was sitting listening to a professor go on about the business judgment rule in Corporations. Since I was back home, I started getting a few calls to do some recording and started looking into getting a good rig together. I'd discovered that computers and software had come a long way since the last time I was immersed in the audio world. As someone who grew up editing with razor blades, I always loved the idea of a non-linear editing system, but the computer systems of the late 90s and early 00s didn't really do it for me.
After I graduated from law school, my son was born and during the birth he suffered a brain injury that meant that my wife and I had to drop everything and attend to his recovery. Since I couldn't commit to a law job (let alone focus on taking the bar), I needed another source of income, so I started doing location work again, and discovered that while everyone and his brother had a computer with an interface, few people had the experience and ear training that I had acquired over the years. I got to record Zimbabwean marimba ensembles, world class jazz groups (the latest included Ron Miles, Bill Frisell, and Brian Blade), funk bands, Brazilian traditional music, bluegrass, singer songwriters, etc., all while being able to be home so that I could devote myself to my son's recovery. I am happy to say that by 18 months, he had not only recovered, but shot past milestones of kids much older, with a huge vocabulary and great cognitive skills, and now he's an amazing 3 year old who loves to make up songs and play the drums.
Finally, I took the bar exam, got a job and started working, mostly in immigration, but I'm still playing gigs and doing a fair amount of recording. As someone who came up in the analog world, I love what computers can do, but it has been a bit overwhelming trying to organize the huge capabilities that they present, especially the vast depth of a program like Pro Tools. Back in the day, I had mentors in the world of tape and mixing boards, but that's not a practical thing for me to seek out at this point. While I've developed a certain amount of expertise in capturing audio, the universe of mixing in the box is vast, indeed.
I'm really looking forward to be able to delve into PureMix to get a handle on the workflow and possibilities that come with modern recording. Life is always about learning and seeking things that are new.
Richard Skopnik - Winner of an 12 month PureMix Subscription
I’m a freelance Producer / Recording & Mix Engineer based in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. I came through the ranks and cut my teeth at the Dairy Studios in Brixton, London before I went freelance and moved across the Atlantic. My musical preferences lie with rock and metal but while I enjoy working on those types of music, I also equally enjoy working on other genres such as country, folk, and reggae amongst others.
I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into my Puremix subscription and seeing what kind of tutorials are available and absorbing from them as much as I can. I believe you can never stop learning, so if I can learn anywhere near as much from this subscription as I have from the articles and videos on Pro Tools Expert and Pensado’s Place to name but a few over the years, I will be one happy camper.
Anne-Marie Ront - Winner of an 12 month PureMix Subscription
I am a Toronto based Freelance Sound Designer/Editor & Re-Recording Mixer who has worked on various feature films, shorts, web series, interactive games and animations. Currently, I am working towards the realm of TV and VR industries. I grew up playing all sorts of musical instruments when I was young and prior to my career in post audio, I was a web developer. Whilst mainly being self-taught and working with a number of the most talented industry pros in post audio and games, I have also taken diverse courses at Berklee College of Music, School of Audio Engineering and Point Blank Music College.
Thanks PTE and PureMix for the annual subscription! I am a long time reader of the PTE blog and find your videos and reviews so helpful! With the rise of non-linear education, the PureMix subscription will help me learn new mixing and production tricks and keep me on my toes. I don't do enough mixing and mastering of music since I work in post. I work on music as a hobby in my spare time and find myself learning new things all of the time.
Dave Rhodes - Winner of an 12 month PureMix Subscription
I manage a recording studio in Auckland, New Zealand, called Depot Sound. Depot Sound is part of a creative community called Depot Artspace, which includes art galleries, a professional development programme, publications and a design studio. I work with a really diverse range of clients, from school groups to well-known NZ musicians.
I’ve been the studio manager and main engineer at Depot Sound for 3 years, and before this I spent 7 years working in a larger commercial facility as both a recording engineer and a DVD author. Earlier in my career, I spent 9 years making radio programs for commercial radio. Whatever my day job, I’ve always recorded bands freelance, and in 2002 I won the New Zealand Music Award for engineer of the year.
Living and working in New Zealand can feel a long way away from the global music industry so I spend a lot of time reading and watching the internet and picking up tips and tricks from well-known engineers. I recently bought the Andrew Scheps PureMix video and picked up some awesome parallel vocal chains which I’ve been using a lot lately, so winning a year’s subscription is going to keep me busy for a long time!
Angelbird
Kalle Johansson - Winner of an Angelbird SSD2go Pocket Drive
I am a software engineer living in Gothenburg, Sweden who does music and video productions on my spare time as an extra income but mostly because it's so fun :)
The Angelbird SSD2go pocket drive will serve me very well since I do a lot of live concert recordings and to have a fast tracking drive is always nice :D
Benjamin Mellot - Winner of an Angelbird SSD2 Wrk Drive
Thanks for selecting me to win the Angelbird SSD wrk drive. It should be an excellent boot drive for the Mac in the studio allowing me to get to work faster!
My studio is located just outside of Washington, DC and is called Nothing but Noise. I started recording my band on a cassette 4-track and have been collecting gear and knowledge ever since. I went to The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, OH. From there I worked various jobs at a cassette and CD manufacturer, Internet radio station, and another CD manufacturer. All while building my studio skills and client list. Eventually the studio work took over and became my full time job.
Most of my work is recording and mixing. I'm also front of house at a local church. It's awesome that I get to do what I do with such amazing people everyday.
Thanks again and I look forward to future videos and articles from Pro Tools Expert. You all have certainly helped expand my knowledge and I visit your site often. Thank you!
Sonarworks
Jerome Goffette - Winner of a Sonarworks Reference 3 Headphone Calibration Software
I'm a bass and double bass musician from Senlis, a nice little town near Paris in France, and my wife plays the harp.
Our studio is in the basement of our house and we're presently recording the fifth album for Deskomp, our traditionnal Breton music band with guitare, flute, and Breton vocals as well.
We use various headphones (Beyerdynamic, Sony) and we hope that the use of Sonarworks Reference 3 Headphone Calibration Plug-in to bring us the same flat sound whether we use one or the other.
Errico Gerard - Winner of a Sonarworks Reference 3 Speaker Calibration Software
My name is Gerard Errico I'm 48 years old. I live in Clermont-Ferrand, France. I started as a musician learning to play guitar in the 80s. After playing with several rock bands, I became interested in working with music on my computer.
My first DAW was Cubase VST around 1997. After testing several DAW my choice finally stopped on Pro Tools...
Recently, I founded my own studio called "Particule Studio". Rather than being oriented around rock, I am currently working on a mix for a country music band as well as for the soundtrack for an advertisement.
The Sonarworks Reference 3 Calibration Software will allow to be accurate in my mix/mastering and was the missing link to my studio. For sure its a must!
Output
Matthias Dorn - Winner of an Output Exhale Virtual Instrument
I´m a hobby musician and producer. I´m working on a pop-project with a singer an songwriter and next month we are going to publish our first song. The name of our project is Pasence, a neologism made of the terms "past" & "presence". My job is to play guitars, keyboards and bass and to mix and master. We have 12 songs we´re working on and sometimes it´s hard to make them sound a little bit more modern. So I think a tool like Output Exhale could be a good way to accomplish that. I've heard some audio examples and I liked it very much.
There we go the nest 13 winners from nearly 40 prizes in our Brand Of The Year Award prize draw. Watch out for more posts with the rest of the winners.