NARAS Chapter Tracks Live Band with B1 Pres and B2 Converters
Seattle, WA – The international rep firm, Audio Agent, hosted a recent meeting of the NW Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at Seattle’s Avast! Recording Co. Studio owner, Stuart Hallerman, piloted the ex-Lenny Kravitz-owned 64 channel API Legacy console while Audio Agent VP Sales, Eric Boyer, moderated the evenings’s events. Audio Agent founder, Dave Christenson and BURL designer, Kevin Dickey, were also on hand to discuss BURL products and design philosophy.
NARAS’ Michael Stephens recruited an all-star Seattle band for the evening which included The Fastbacks’ Kurt Bloch on guitar, The Chevy Chasers’ Ryan Leyva, on bass, The Cops’ Dave Weeks on drums and the incomparable Choklate on vocals. The crowd of approximately 60 Recording Academy members listened as the band tracked several songs through BURL B2 ADC and DAC‘s as well as the Digidesign 192 I/O and Mytek 8x192ADDA. The recordings were compared with tracks scrutinized individually and as a mix.
The overall impression was that the BURL tracks offered “a very deep analog sound with tight, punchy lows, astonishing midrange clarity, and a natural, airy high end reminiscent of a perfectly-aligned analog tape recorder.” This is a very common observation about BURL converters due to their elegant Class-A discrete zero-feedback, zero-capacitor signal path—at the heart of which is BURL’s custom-manufactured BX1 input transformer which eats transients for lunch and exhibits an unmatched musicality for a digital device. Immediately following the BX1 is the B2’s audiophile-grade input attenuator which allows you to drive the transformer as hard as you’d like, pushing the signal right to the edge of clipping and into the same nonlinear zone that makes analog tape so appealing. Recording veterans enjoy the creative applications of BURL’s soft boundary between distortion and clipping, while new users appreciate all the headroom.
Many thanks to all who participated.
Audio Agent's Eric Boyer opens the meeting.
An engaged, highly qualified group of 60 NARAS members.
(l-r) Dave Weeks, Kurt Bloch, Choklate and Ryan Leyva killed it.
Avast! Recording's Stuart Hallerman at the helm.
Eric Boyer sits in for some additional drum tracking.
Erik Boyer and BURL's Kevin Dickey with the B2 Bombers.
