Although they work independently, France's Benoît Gilg and Alain Français meet frequently to ensure that their gear and techniques stay at industry's cutting edge. Their works are numerous and often prestigious. For example, Gilg runs broadcast sound for several of the headlining acts at France's massive Jazz Sous Les Pommiers and Vieilles Charrues Festivals and at Germany's Hurricane Festival.

LONDON, ENGLAND: Gareth Jones is well known for producing ground-breaking albums with ground-breaking artists, such as Depeche Mode, Wire, and Erasure, and he continues to work with their next generation heirs, such as Interpol, Grizzly Bear, and Mogwai. From the start, Jones has been a technological pioneer, blazing trails down which the masses later followed. Jones was an early adopter of digital recording technologies and is today considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the Logic Audio recording, mixing, and editing platform. Relatively recently in the context of his long career, Jones outfitted his studio – which is by necessity mobile – with a pair of Metric Halo FireWire interfaces, that provide him with sixteen studio-grade mic preamps, sixteen channels of AD and DA, powerful DSP processing, 80-bit master summing, and – taken together – the flexibility to do what needs to be done, whatever the circumstance.

Fumuj is not an ordinary band. Formed in 2003 by drummer Romain Pasquier and bassist Fred Guillon in their home country of France, the band has released three studio albums with wide popular appeal and critical praise.

BLUEFIELDS, NICARAGUA: Brooklyn-based engineer and producer Michael Gassert, known to his music and film colleagues as "MikeSound," would appear to spend little time in New York. His uncanny knack for capturing the sonic soul of a musical performance, no matter how remote the location or strained the resources, has earned him the respect of his peers and a full travel calendar.

It's been almost thirty years since Twisted Sister released its iconic Stay Hungry, the cover of which featured frontman Dee Snider dressed and painted as a macabre rag doll, backed into the corner in a dilapidated tenement, threatening (perhaps?) to eat (we think?) a raw shank of meat.

In only a dozen years, Jonathan Loeser has risen from newly-minted SAE Institute graduate to FOH engineer for multi-platinum country act Rascal Flatts. Along the way, he has worked as FOH engineer & production manager for Olivia Newton-John, FOH & monitor engineer for Prince’s “Welcome 2 America” tour, and FOH Engineer for Colbie Caillat’s 2011 Tour.

PORTLAND, OREGON: “These days, I feel like the only way for a band to succeed is to be self-contained – the band has to be able to take care of everything for itself. The Metric Halo ULN-8 contains mic pre’s, converters, routing logic, and DSP, and it’s absolutely world-class. Anyone who is trying to set up a recording rig or a live rig from scratch knows that it can be an overwhelming task to sift through the tangle of possibilities. I say, ‘Bypass it all! You’ll find everything you need with zero-compromise quality in the Metric Halo ULN-8.’” So says producer/engineer/musician Brandon Rush, who, together with longtime friend Kyle Sears, fronts Priory, an up-and-coming band from Portland, Oregon that recently signed to Warner Bros.

(PHOTO CREDIT: © 2015 Jiro Schneider)

NEW JERSEY: The video for Karmic Juggernaut's new song, "Oo Wah Hoo," documents the band's inspiring and utterly fresh take on the recording process. Piloting a Subaru Outback topped with a plane of solar panels and freighted with a bank of batteries, the band toured its favorite locations in the great state of New Jersey to record each instrument in the glory of the outdoors.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: “I work too many hours,” laughed Ariel Borujow, chief recording and mix engineer at New York City’s now-famous Stadium Red studios. With fifteen years spent in front of the monitors, Borujow has worked with Kanye West, The Black Eyed Peas, Faith Evans, J-Lo, and countless others.

Andrew Dowling is charged with an impressive task: make a FOH mix translate to every seat in any random venue. He frequently works for twenty-time Grammy winner and country legend Vince Gill, but Dowling applies his in-demand skills for bands from radically divergent genres as well.