ALLEN ROWAND JOINS METRIC HALO TO FACILITATE PRODUCT TRAINING AND WEBSITE TUTORI
HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK: Allen Rowand, a sound engineer, sound designer and consultant with ten years of technical xperience in the Broadway
theater sound industry, has joined Metric Halo.
Rowand, who has worked for Masque Sound and PRG, has been a beta tester for Metric Halo for five years.
He will be working to provide current and prospective users with a program of training classes, as well as online tutorials, that will allow them to
unlock the full potential of the products.
Working on the East Coast with event and entertainment sound specialists
Masque Sound and PRG's ProMix division in their respective mixing console
and technical departments since early 1998, Rowand amassed a wealth of
experience on the configuration, repair and testing of theatrical sound
equipment. During six years at Masque Sound, until late 2006, he specialized
in Cadac mixing consoles, modifying and customizing the equipment for the
particular requirements of Broadway productions.
Two years ago, he began working as an advance sound engineer for the U.S.
national tour of the hit Broadway show "Wicked," eventually leaving Masque
Sound to concentrate full time on advancing the production into venues
across the country. Rowand has also worked as a sound consultant on shows by
tap dancing phenomenon Savion Glover and as a sound designer for productions
in New York, Ohio and Switzerland.
Rowand has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Communications from Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as a Masters of Fine
Arts in Sound Production, Design & Technology from Ohio University in
Athens, Ohio.
Rowand is working on two principal support initiatives in his new position,
he explains. "One is the tutorial aspect, which I'm going to be doing along
with Marc Schonbrun, who has done some great movies for us. Metric Halo's
products are very flexible and very powerful, and sometimes it's a daunting
task to understand everything that the boxes are capable of. We've been
putting together tutorials to go up on the website to jump-start users and
make sure that some of the more complicated concepts are easier to
understand."
The capabilities of the company's audio interfaces are a case in point, he
continues. "They have a feature set that you don't find in any other
products, so it's not the kind of thing that people are necessarily used to.
We're trying to give them examples of how all these different functions and
features can be used to help them along."
Secondly, he says, "I'm starting to work on putting together some training
classes for SpectraFoo. Within the last few years there have been a number
of other programs - some commercial, some free - that have come into that
software analyzer space. We're trying to show people that SpectraFoo, even
though it has celebrated its tenth birthday, still has features and
abilities that nothing else in the market has."
Rowand will also be working closely with end-users and sound designers in
the theatrical community to integrate Metric Halo products into their
systems. "We're looking at using our interfaces for the sound effects
playback as well as being the input for the analysis system, so everything
ties together and you don't have to do a lot of setup." Smaller tours will
often have a performance in the afternoon or evening of the load-in, he
says. "So anything that we can do to make it quicker and easier for them to
use an analyzer, rather than try to tune the system by ear, is a definite
benefit for the production."
Rowand's firsthand knowledge of the product also includes using SpectraFoo
to bench-test Cadac consoles while working at Masque Sound. "For the
majority of my work I use SpectraFoo and I also have all of the Metric Halo
audio interfaces," he adds. "My job with 'Wicked,' and with most of the
theatrical work that I've been doing, is in room and system tuning. I go in
and analyze the performance venue to get the sound to work in that
location."
SpectraFoo has a particular advantage over competing analysis tools, Rowand
points out. "SpectraFoo's main competitor will let you look at two channels
of audio at a time. When I go out and do the room analysis for 'Wicked' I
use seven microphones simultaneously. So I can position my microphones
throughout the venue and be able to either look at their levels and
frequency responses simultaneously or very quickly select one, take a
snapshot of what's happening there, and then go to another location and be
able to compare those two. To do that with anything else in our product
space would be impossible.
Based New York's Hudson Valley, Metric Halo provides the world with
high-resolution metering, analysis, recording and processing solutions with
award-winning software and hardware.
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