Peter Szabadoš
Sound engineer, musician, dobro player
Experience with AAI products
My first experience with AAI (Authentic Audio Image) products was accidental, I was recording in the concert hall of the Primary Art School in Považská Bystrica, the hall was made available to me by my friend, the school director. I needed to quickly record a demo song for the singer Lucia Briestenska, a native of Považská Bystrica. I recorded the vocals on an excellent tube microphone in the 3000 € price range.
When we finished recording, the school principal came to us and asked me to swap the power cord to the power supply to the tube microphone with the cord he brought. It wasn’t quite clear to me at the time what he was getting at. At the same time, he asked Lucia to sing the same song into the backing track one more time to a new track, for the sake of comparing the recordings. He explained to me briefly that the cable he needed to compare on the source to a quality tube microphone was a unique new product in a wide portfolio of specialty products. Peter had mentioned to me several times on the phone that they test specialty products as well as cables, but I didn’t take it too seriously. So I guess fate wanted me to get around to it eventually. So we changed the cable and recorded the vocals to the same song on a different track one more time. I really didn’t expect what I was about to witness. It was clear from the first second that the vocal recording was on a completely different quality level compared to the previous one. Her voice suddenly sounded much fuller, it was more present, there was much more information in it, I didn’t want to believe that something like this could be achieved by changing a single power cable to the tube microphone source. At that moment I didn’t know what to make of it, because this replacement of the power cord didn’t interfere with the signal path at all. What was even more incredible was that a high-end microphone with excellent parameters, used in the best studios in the world, can actually be taken to an even higher quality level by this, and in a fundamental way. The next day I listened to it carefully several times in my studio on studio monitors, the sound of which I have listened to very thoroughly over several years, and the difference between the recorded vocal tracks could be heard so clearly and distinctly that it was immediately clear to me at that moment which track I would use for the final recording.
Since then a few months have passed, I have borrowed several products from the guys from AAI, which I use and test in sound and recording in various spaces, concert halls, theatres, studios, and I can say that the sound of my equipment has reached a new quality level with the involvement of these products. The people I work with at concerts, artists, sound engineers, and ordinary listeners react to the sound of my equipment with undisguised surprise.
One of the last events we sounded was the Gypsy Jazz Festival at the Arena Theatre in Bratislava. It was marked as one of the best sounded editions. The local sound engineer Peter Kolar (drums) was surprised that his home-made L-acoustic equipment sounded several classes better, using a cheap Behringer X32Rack digital mixer. The hardware was powered by miracle products for me, cables (220V power, signal and mic XLR), and of course a power distribution strip from Authentic Audio Image.
I thank the guys for allowing me to be the first in the pro industry to test their perfect products, and I wish them much success in their future development, as I have been told that this is just the beginning.
