We have started this year's series of public events for My Reel Club™. On 24-25 June, we held a technical presentation of the album Palents by Gábor Juhász Trio at Digital Pro Studio, where the composer and the entire technical crew shared their experiences and impressions of the recording process and lessons learned from their own perspectives with an attentive and enthusiastic audience, who added colour to the programme with their insightful questions. We enjoyed it very much, but we hope that others also found the session useful and were able to learn about the technical and musical details of recording.
Ferenc Koscsó (MRC), founder of My Reel Club™, explained our goals and plans for the future of the club and the technical equipment used in the demonstration, especially the large Danley speakers, which stunned many with their dynamically unlimited sound:
István Matók (Digital Pro Studio), chief sound engineer of the recording, presented the studio's audio system, the microphone concept used for the Planets album, and the technological and aesthetic background of the multitrack PCM recording and post-production:
László Papp (MRC, LuXor Audio) talked about the birth of the DXD/DSD version of the material, the technical difficulties and the peculiarities of the different digital audio formats, recording techniques and the acoustic environment:
Tamás Perczel talked about the technical background of the analogue tape version, the Nagra tape recorder and its setup, but we also learned some interesting facts about the tape. Composer Gábor Juhász, the leader of the trio, told us about the birth of the album's musical material and shared his thoughts and experiences about the recording process, giving the audience an exciting insight into how a musician relates to the technical environment and sound quality in a recording studio, while performing and listening to music:
At the end of the presentation, the newly installed Digital Pro Studio monitoring system allowed the audience to listen to the Dolby Atmos version of the album, which is also the first Hungarian jazz recording in this new audio format. In keeping with our community-building intentions, the official programme consisted not only of disciplined performances, but also of interesting discussions and professional debates on musical and technical issues, with everyone sharing their opinions, impressions and stories. The enthusiastic performers were, of course, at the forefront of storytelling, but it is also a kind of professional hazard with us that every technical situation brings a story to mind.
To the great delight of the participants, as a bonus we were also treated to a live musical experience, with an acoustic version of one of the album's tracks performed by Gábor Juhász (guitar) and Zoltán Oláh (double bass). Of course, we listened to the composition in all the recording formats as an interesting comparison and of course we couldn't get away with the usual question about which one is better, but that's a secret of the participants for now! The album will be available to all in July.
