The world of Hope&Glory has been just a wee bit Sony-obsessed this week. Not that we haven’t pushed out a LOT of other work as well. But Sony has provided a lot of the entertainment.
Job one of the week has been the orchestration of our first major pan-European event for the brand as we had a little under 100 of the continent’s tech, music and lifestyle media in town for a High Resolution Audio extravaganza.
First order of the day was a Hi-Res Audio experience at London’s Metropolis Studios. Given that around 50% of the UK Top 40 charts is either recorded, mixed, mastered, or creatively treated within Metropolis’ stunning Grade II ‘Power House’ complex, it seemed appropriate really.
The theme for the event as a whole was “Music As The Artist Intended It”.
So we had a showcase of the Sony products, an experience from the artists themselves and then heard from the perspective of music experts and finally the journalists got to play sound engineers to see the nuance and detail created in the recording process that could be lost with lower resolution listening formats.
To kick off, each and every journalist was shown through the whole Sony Hi-area range by the H&G and Sony teams, with various experiences that showed the difference that the technology brings to the audio experience for those who want to hear their music “as the artist intended it”.
From there it was over to music historian, critic and generally knowledgeable fella, Pete Paphides. He talked about the lengths that artists will go to getting the perfect sound when they’re in the studio – all too often then lost by the time tracks are heard on standard digital music formats but preserved in Hi-Res.
Then he handed over the The Editors for their guest slot of the day. They talked about the way they go about recording their music and the different set ups they use to capture every reverb, every echo and every note to perfection.
That was followed by a brief performance by the band before the media were given a chance to turn sound engineers and have a bash at some recording themselves – experiencing at first hand the nuances that are put into the music so they could understand the nuances you’d want to hear as a listener.
All of that wrapped and over 80 interviews with the band, the experts and studio engineers later we were done.
A thoroughly successful days audio stimulation done before dinner and a quick trip to our UK experiential piece for Sony … As, across town, Studio to Stereo had just opened its doors …
