Mike Mettler

The Big Man has left the building.

Clarence Clemons, the powerful tenor saxophonist of the E Street Band and onstage foil for Bruce Springsteen for 40 years, died Saturday at age 69 due to complications from a recent stroke.

It’s no surprise that Stewart Copeland and Ricky Kej’s collaborative effort Divine Tides won a Grammy Award in February 2023 for Best Immersive Audio Album for the 360 Reality Audio version of it done by the ace surround-sound mixing team of producer Herbert Waltl and mixer Eric Schilling. Here, Waltl and Schilling discuss how they created that richly expansive 360RA mix, as well as the key differences between stereo mixes and immersive mixes, how to best tap into emotional responses in a spatial audio setting, and how they strive for their mixes to get you to experience hearing certain mix elements both well above and well below your ear height. . .

Duke Ellington knew how to swing. Ellington (1899–1974) was one of the most prolific and influential songwriters of the 20th Century, a purveyor of what he liked to call American Music (he eschewed being labeled as “just” a jazz artist). You know him, even if you don’t think you know him: “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Mood Indigo,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” are but slivers of his deep (and deep-felt) compositional and performing catalog.

One particular set of highly attuned ears that were influenced by Ellington’s magic happen to belong to Joe Jackson. Yes, that Joe Jackson, he of the skinny-tie New Wave scene of the late ’70s who began reinventing himself at the dawn of the ’80s and never looked back. “I was always ready to move on,” Jackson, 58, said matter-of-factly over lunch in midtown Manhattan this past spring. (Well, to clarify, I had lunch; Jackson was content with “just water.”) “It never occurred to me that listeners may not have been ready to hear it. I thought the whole idea of being an artist was to do something different than everyone else.”