Places to go

I am an audio geek.  There, I said it.  With this in mind, there are several cool online resources to stay up on what’s happening and learn new things.  The first few are Digidesign specific…the others not so much.

First, and most importantly, the Digidesign User Conference is invaluable and was a factor in our decision to partner with Digi.  I’m so glad the Venue has a vibrant user community.  This is a daily check-in and read.

The next one might be new to some, old to others.  Regardless…there’s a great resource of tips and tricks for the Venue platform that’s published by Digidesign on their site.  Topics such as the events list, tap tempo, managing multitrack recordings, gain guess, etc.  Really good stuff.  If you want to receive these tips as a part of the live sound newsletter that’s normally published once a month by Digidesign, go to their site and sign up.  There’s far more usable content than sales babble so you won’t be disappointed.

Another really great resource is the archived Webinars that Robert Scovill has been conducting the past 8 months.  Each one lasts about an hour and includes a 45 minute presentation and 15 minutes of q&a.  Topics include introduction to Venue, Virtual Soundcheck, Plug-Ins, Snapshots, PQ/Aviom Integration, D-Show vs. D-Show Profile, etc.  A new webinar normally happens on the last Wednesday of every month.  Check it out here.  While these webinars definitely focus on Digidesign hardware, many of them also include just general good practice stuff from Scovi that would be beneficial to users of other platforms.

Outside of Digidesign, the best overall live audio forum I’ve ever found is the Live Audio Board over at ProSoundWeb.com.  There is another board there for Church sound but I don’t find that one very inspiring.  But the LAB has a huge list of contributors and is normally a pretty good read.

A new one to me that I think is flying way below the radar is a forum set up at Rat Sound’s website.  If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a pretty big fan of Dave Rat.  The forum on their site is full of some really great content and, if you’re like me, you’ll be sucked in till you lose track of time the first few times you visit.  Places to specifically check out are the Doing the Gig, Sound Questions, and Sound Business.  Archives go all the way back to 2004 so you can keep yourself busy here for a while!