Unquestionably one of the most renowned and well-attended jazz festivals in the United States, this year’s 2023 Newport Jazz Festival—held August 4th through 6th—was no exception. This year’s event was held at Fort Adams State Park and included three stages. Steve Remote, founder and chief engineer of Aura-Sonic Ltd., a mobile and location production company in New York, was tasked with capturing the performances and, on the Harbor Stage, his setup included TASCAM’s recently introduced Sonicview 24XP Digital Recording and Mixing Console.
Based in New York since the late ‘70s, Remote has worked on music of almost every genre with some of the most respected artists in music history. He has worked on 19 Grammy Award nominated albums, of which three have won. He is a five-time TEC Award nominee and a 2009 TEC Award winner in the category of Remote Production / Recording or Broadcast; JVC Newport Jazz Festival. Remote established Aura-Sonic, Ltd. to handle a variety of recording duties: live albums, live radio and television broadcasts, film and video concert remotes. Not content with operating a conventional recording studio, he decided to create a studio on wheels so he could go to the performance rather than the performance coming to him. He has designed and built six mobile studios and many portable rigs to date. He discussed his experience using the TASCAM Sonicview 24XP at the recent Newport Jazz Festival.
“For the Harbor Stage setup,” Remote explained, “we used a TASCAM Sonicview 24XP outfitted with the optional TASCAM IF-MA64/EX MADI card. The Sonicview 24XP was used along with our recording rig to multitrack record all the sets at the Harbor Stage, which is one of the three stages we were capturing audio for. We were running a dual redundant 64-track recording setup. Depending on the input count for each set, we were recording up to 56 tracks of the 64 available. The Sonicview 24XP handled the first 24 channels, which fed our recorders via its built-in Dante stream.”
“Eighteen artists/bands performed during the three-day weekend event,” Remote added. “Dave Holland, The War And Treaty, Matthew Whitaker, and the Bill Charlap Trio are four of the performances that come to mind. With that said, there were many outstanding performance captures that weekend. We were there to capture multitrack audio for the Newport Festivals Foundation archives. In the past, limited addition double vinyl records have been made available to the public. A select number of sets were broadcasted and streamed on MVY Radio, which aired each evening at 7pm during the drive-home time after the day’s live performance sets.”
When queried about those Sonicview 24XP attributes that he really appreciated, Remote offered the following, “I love the fact that the Sonicview comes standard with the IF-MTR32 32-track recorder card and has a built-in 64×64 Dante interface right out of the box. The additional I/O and word clock I/O is another big plus.”
When operating today’s electronic recording and mixing equipment, it is not uncommon for questions to arise. Hence, responsive and capable support services are crucial. When asked about his experience with TASCAM’s customer support services, Remote responded enthusiastically. “For decades I have found TASCAM customer support services to be responsive, extremely helpful, and professional,” he said, “which is mission critical in the mobile and location production industry. From the early DTRS to the MX-2424 to the X48 and now, DA6400 and Sonicview recording devices, TASCAM customer support has always been there for us.”
Before shifting his attention back to the business of the day, Remote offered these concluding thoughts regarding his experience with the TASCAM Sonicview 24XP, “The overall sound quality with the Sonicview 24XP is exceptional. I was impressed with the 24 built-in mic pres and all the additional I/O interfacing that’s available, which includes the built-in 64×64 Dante interface and the two expansion slots which add MADI, AES/EBU, additional 16-channel analog outputs and multitrack recording options when needed. The Sonicview 24XP is, in many regards, the culmination of TASCAM’s years of experience designing and building recording equipment. It offers a rich feature set while also providing the flexibility to customize the console to one’s preferences. What’s not to like?”
To learn more about Steve Remote and Aura-Sonic Ltd., visit the company’s online social media page at https://www.facebook.com/RemoteRecording/. To view Steve Remote’s YouTube Channel, go to https://www.youtube.com/user/AuraSonicMobile.
