The date: July 25th, 2015.
The event: IMSTA Festa Chicago.
The result: More satisfying than a slice of deep dish pizza. ????
Last weekend the Audionamix team had the pleasure to attend the first ever IMSTA Festa Chicago, hosted at the beautifully located SAE Chicago. We were welcomed by the friendly SAE staff, including Campus Director James Thomas and Audio Technology Department Chair Ricco Lumpkins.
The beautiful downtown Chicago SAE Campus.
Assigned to their Learning Resource Center, we transformed the space dramatically into the ADX listening lounge and, well… learning center.
Feast your eyes on the incredible before / after transformation.
Equipped with an area for group demonstrations, our product experts fielded questions of technical curiosity and awe from the event’s over 800 visitors. Product specialist Steve, who celebrated his birthday at the event, was honored (aka humiliated) frequently by his coworkers and his ‘Birthday Man’ name tag.
The sofa and library area offered select guests a chance to relax and experience the latest unreleased development in ADX separation tech.
Peeping the latest ADX app in the listening lounge.
Before the event was through twelve visitors walked away with a sneak preview of our latest creation as well as gift cards to feed their media and coffee addictions (and by that we mean iTunes and Starbucks, of course). One extremely lucky audiophile attended demonstrations from all 30 exhibitors and was rewarded with a full mind and a full copy of ADX TRAX Pro. Congratulations to the lucky winner ????!
My personal favorite trade show moments usually involve meeting active members of the ADX community, and IMSTA Chicago was no exception. I was struck with the creative problem solving of one of our TRAX Pro users who targets and removes reverb from his production and found sound recordings using our reverb target algorithm and spectral editor.
Other highlights of the event included a jam packed state-of-the-industry keynote presentation by Steve Albini, a notorious analogue advocate, and the sweet sounds of KeytarJeff who artfully showcased MusicLab’s line of virtual instruments.
Steve Albini delivering his keynote address to the packed auditorium.
KeytarJeff wails with his library of MusicLab virtual guitars.
As the day drew to a close, a Chicago artist was crowned the regional winner of the IMSTA FESTA Song Writing contest and advanced to the finals of the competition. With over $12,000 in prizes on the line, including Komplete 10, Arturia V, and free entry to Black Rock Studios Song Camp in beautiful Santorini Greece, I for one am excited to hear how the competition stacks up at IMSTA Festa NY and Toronto later this year. May the best song win!
Once the SAE doors closed, the ADX team, led by our fearless leader / COO Rick Silva, left Chicago in style on our very own yacht, equipped with our very own onboard helicopter, in our very own Navy Pier inspired dreams.
Yacht + Copter (viewed from Navy Pier, which was as close as we got to it).
So to all of you in Chi city and beyond, we remind you to dream big, to love learning your craft, and to support the software you use!
– The ADX IMSTA Chicago Crew
