Japan’s Summer Sonic Festival Electrified By More Than 1000 Audio-Technica Microphones

A major sponsor of Summer Sonic for the last nine years, Audio-Technica supplied more than 1000 microphones from across the company’s wireless and wired ranges to the festival, which was held simultaneously in Osaka and Tokyo in August. This year Summer Sonic attracted a total of approximately 160,000 attendees, and Audio-Technica made its presence known with prominent banners and signage at all of the music venues. Additionally, in one of the festival’s exhibition halls, the company had an interactive booth where attendees could test out Audio-Technica’s extensive range of consumer headphones.

The array of Audio-Technica microphones – from the flagship Artist Elite 5000 Series and 40 Series to the workhorse Artist Series – guaranteed audio consistency for engineers and artists as they performed at the festival.

According to Ken “Pooch” Van Druten, FOH Engineer for Slash, “I think the all-time favorite for me is the AT4050MP multi-pattern condenser microphone. It’s a microphone that I put in front of anything and it translates – guitars, basses, percussion; I’ve put it in the weirdest places and it just works.”

“I have yet to find an Audio-Technica product that does not perform as advertised,” reports Michael Graham, monitor engineer for Dream Theater, highlighting some of the A-T models on drummer Mike Portnoy’s kit: “We use ATM450 cardioid condenser microphones on the snare bottoms; I absolutely love the crack that mic is able to capture. We use ATM350 clip-on condensers on all of Mike’s smaller toms and AE3000s on the larger toms. That is an extremely solid microphone that has a really tight, punchy low end and still gets the top-end slap of the floor toms.”

Audio-Technica additionally provided on-site support staff from their US and Japan offices to the twin-city Summer Sonic festival, which demanded close attention to wireless frequency coordination due to the many North American and European artists performing. As Los Angeles-based Rob Kelso, a 16-year veteran with festival producer Creativeman, noted, “There are always frequency problems, depending on what people are bringing in, because there is so much wireless going around. Plus, the Japanese frequencies are different than the American frequencies. We’re always glad to have Audio-Technica personnel on site to help with potential wireless issues. ”