Production sound mixer Joe Foglia, who began his career recording music at Miami’s Criteria Studios where he engineered or assisted on recordings by artists such as Black Sabbath and Crosby, Stills & Nash, now runs his own mobile production company (Southeast Audio ADR) that recently adopted the all-digital D Squared line of wireless components from Lectrosonics.
Foglia’s film and TV credits include the 1980s-defining series Miami Vice, for which he earned an Emmy nomination for best sound, as well as Marley and Me, Scrubs, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. A lifetime Lectrosonics user, the new additions to his toolkit include five DSQD four-channel receivers, two DCR822 compact dual-channel receivers, M2T transmitters for IFB as well as a selection of all-digital and Digital Hybrid packs — the latter being receivable by the D Squared systems.
Foglia first entered the music industry a computer background. “I hooked up with a guy in technical school, Peter Yianilos, and later we found ourselves working at a firm building computers for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,” he recalls. “We left at the same time to go work for MCI — not the phone company but the one that made 24-track tape machines and recording consoles. They were eventually bought by Sony, but Peter and I decided we wanted to put together a remote recording truck.”
This helped launched him into production and broadcast sound mixing in a practical sense, he adds: “When I worked at Criteria, they built another truck, and we did some live remotes for CBS, who were introducing live music into their New Year’s specials. That’s where I first got experience in the different signal needs of different ‘customers’ — our own recording, broadcast, the live concert sound in real time, and so on. Some of what I already learned translated well.”
Foglia first switched to Lectrosonics equipment after wrapping his work on Miami Vice. “I had been using Sony through Miami Vice because it was state-of-the-art at the time. I had four channels and that was it,” he reminisces. “When Peter and I started moving over to other shows, we switched to the Lectrosonics 185s. … Fast-forward to going to L.A. to do Scrubs. It was Glen Trew [of Nashville’s Trew Audio] who first got me to move to the original Venue system. We took over an actual hospital building for Scrubs, and the Venue worked flawlessly in that environment throughout the entire series. After we wrapped, I upgraded to the Venue2. At one time or another, I’ve had almost everything Lectrosonics makes.”
The Dante compatibility of his DSQD receivers is just one of several assets, he notes. “Let’s say a scene is on top of a building and for some reason I can’t be up there. My receiver rack is set up so that I can pull it from my main cart, send it up, and have them throw me one Ethernet cable to feed my Cantar Mini recorder and the laptop I run Wireless Designer on.”
Foglia upgrades his gear approximately every five years, and recommends that young and beginning mixers seek out “the good stuff” on the pre-owned market. “Lectro is serious about what they do, but also one of the more accessible companies out there,” he concludees. “They also almost never obsolete their products and stop supporting them — nearly all of their competition does that more much often. You’ve gotta take care of the people who take care of you, and Lectrosonics does. It turns on and works properly every day. What else can you say that about, besides a refrigerator you still have from 1979?”
Read the full conversation with Joe Foglia here.
