Piper Payne is an accomplished mastering engineer, recording engineer, and audio archivist who is currently working out of Michael Romanowski's mastering studios in San Francisco, California.

Alto NYC is Alto Music's New York-based professional audio retailer that truly nurtures a reciprocal relationship with the studio owners, musicians, composers, producers, and engineers who list among its clients. Its Manhattan showroom would be better described as a fully-functioning control room, complete with structural isolation, acoustic treatment, and almost every piece of gear imaginable – all just a patch away from a test drive or shootout in a real working environment.

Sono Luminus, a Virginia-based record label dedicated to ultra-high-fidelity recordings of acoustic, classical, and early music, recently earned seven Grammy nominations. The Los Angeles Percussion Quartet's R?pa-khandha is nominated for "Best Surround Sound Album" and Modern Mandolin Quartet's Americana is nominated for "Best Engineered Classical Album." R?pa-khandha and Americana were both engineered by Sono Luminus' Managing Director and Head Engineer, Daniel Shores.

Nicholas Phan is one of the most exciting new voices in classical music today, as evidenced by the tremendous praise heaped on him from just about every media outlet in the country. He frequently records with New York-based sound engineer Marlan Barry, and the two worked together on 2011's critically-acclaimed Winter Words.

South Korea's Audioguy & Partners is an aptly named clearinghouse for all things related to great audio. Headed by the passionate (and terrifically busy!) Jung-Hoon Choi, Audioguy is a world-class recording studio, an audiophile record label for jazz, classical, and world music, and a dealer for high-end pro audio equipment.

The Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) is a San Francisco-based, non-profit organization “dedicated to the advancement of women in music production and the recording arts,” a worthy undertaking given women’s serious underrepresentation (less than 5%) in professional audio.

Marko Hunt is closing in on four decades behind the mixing console, and he has spent the last thirty-two of them with The Oak Ridge Boys - first at monitors and then later at FOH.

Ariel Borujow is chief engineer at New York City's Stadiumred studios (www.stadiumred.com) and a multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated mix engineer who has worked with artist and producers such as Kanye West, Madonna, The Black Eyed Peas, P Diddy, J-Lo, Chiddy Bang, Just Blaze, and others.

Apart from being a seriously nice guy, veteran engineer and producer Jay Ruston is a monster talent behind a mixing console, be it physical or virtual.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Phil Rigger got his start in the music business the old fashioned way – in a rock band. That was the early 1980s, and the band was Outline.