Held by the Mix Foundation, every year the TEC Awards honour the achievements of individuals and companies for technical innovations used during the production of audio for recordings, films, TV shows and live performances.

The sold-out event honoured winners in 26 categories for technical and creative achievement in the industry, as well as giving Asleep at the Wheel founder, Ray Benson, the Les Paul award, which recognises musical artists every year for their contributions in furthering the art and science of sound.    

This year T Bone Burnett was inducted into the TEC Award’s Hall of Fame. The musician and producer took a 14-year break from his own music to produce highly acclaimed projects including the Grammy-winning soundtrack for the film, Oh Brother Where Art Thou. He also worked on Tony Bennett and KD Lang’s album A Wonderful World, in addition to production on the soundtracks for Walk the Line, The Big Lebowski and numerous other projects. Allison Kraus and Led Zeppelin’s
Robert Plant presented the award on the night.

Creative Awards were given to the production crew that created the surround sound production of James Taylor’s One Man Band CD and DVD and the team responsible for producing the Foo Fighters’s song The Pretender.

A TEC Award for Television Sound Production was given to the producers of NBC’s Saturday Night Live, while the 50th Annual Grammy Awards were recognised in the category of Remote Production/Recording or Broadcast. Other Creative Awards were given to the acoustical team for Red Bull North America’s Red Bull Studio for Studio Design Project and Halo 3 for Interactive Entertainment Sound Production.

Technical Achievement awards were also given to companies that innovated in the design and manufacturing of professional audio equipment. Rupert Neve Designs took home two awards in the categories of Microphone Preamplifier Technology for its Portico 5015, and Large Format Console Technology for the 5088 16-channel, eight buss, expandable analog mixing console.

Yamaha’s PM5DV2 took home an award in the category of Sound Reinforcement Console Technology. The new V2 software for Yamaha’s PM5D digital console adds 30 new features to the board, including virtual soundcheck; a new effect library program; security features such as read-only and studio manager for protecting templates and basic scenes; load lock, which stops internal data from being overwritten by a memory card or studio manager and output isolation.

The TEC Award for Wireless Technology was given to Audio Technica’s SpectraPulse Ultra wideband system. SpectraPulse is unique because it bypasses the RF spectrum and offers users added security. It can use up to 14 simultaneous channels without RF competition or frequency hunting/coordination.

Digidesign won the Workstation Technology Award for Pro Tools 7.4. With added features like the time-manipulating power of elastic time manipulation, Digidesign has added increased flexibility and creativity. Additional features of 7.4 include support for Avid video and shared storage solutions.  

Other awards were given to Euphonix’s MC Mix Controller, which won the award for Small Format Technology; Royer Live Series in the Microphone Technology/Sound Reinforcement category; Meyer Sound’s UP Junior for Sound Reinforcement Loudspeaker; Universal Audio’s 2-LA-2 for Signal Processing Technology/Hardware; Apogee’s Duet for Digital Converter Technology and ATR Master Analog Tape for Recording Devices.

There was a tie between Earthworks PM40 Piano mic and Telefunken USA’s Ela M 260. Both companines shared the award for Microphone Technology/Recording.
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