This year’s 2023 Newport Jazz Festival at Fort Adams State Park in Rhode Island saw Steve Remote, founder and chief engineer of New York-based mobile production company Aura-Sonic, capturing the performances at three stages and, on the Harbor Stage, employing a system incorporating TASCAM’s recently introduced Sonicview 24XP digital recording and mixing console.
Since the late 1970s, Remote has worked on a wide range of music with a resume that includes 19 Grammy Award nominated albums, of which three have won. He is a five-time TEC Award nominee and a 2009 TEC Award winner in the category of Remote Production/Recording or Broadcast; JVC Newport Jazz Festival.
He established Aura-Sonic to handle a variety of recording duties: live albums, live radio and television broadcasts, film and video concert remotes. He’s designed and built six mobile studios and many portable rigs to date.
“For the Harbor Stage setup,” Remote explains, “we used a TASCAM Sonicview 24XP outfitted with the optional TASCAM IF-MA64/EX MADI card. The Sonicview 24XP was used along with our recording rig to multitrack record all the sets at the Harbor Stage, which is one of the three stages we were capturing audio for. We were running a dual redundant 64-track recording setup. Depending on the input count for each set, we were recording up to 56 tracks of the 64 available. The Sonicview 24XP handled the first 24 channels, which fed our recorders via its built-in Dante stream.
“Eighteen artists/bands performed during the three-day weekend event,” he continues. “Dave Holland, The War And Treaty, Matthew Whitaker, and the Bill Charlap Trio are four of the performances that come to mind. With that said, there were many outstanding performance captures that weekend. We were there to capture multitrack audio for the Newport Festivals Foundation archives. In the past, limited addition double vinyl records have been made available to the public. A select number of sets were broadcasted and streamed on MVY Radio, which aired each evening at 7 pm during the drive-home time after the day’s live performance sets.”
About the Sonicview 24XP, he states, “The overall sound quality with the Sonicview 24XP is exceptional. I was impressed with the 24 built-in mic pres and all the additional I/O interfacing that’s available, which includes the built-in 64×64 Dante interface and the two expansion slots which add MADI, AES/EBU, additional 16-channel analog outputs and multitrack recording options when needed. The Sonicview 24XP is, in many regards, the culmination of TASCAM’s years of experience designing and building recording equipment. It offers a rich feature set while also providing the flexibility to customize the console to one’s preferences. What’s not to like?”
