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Ramone to Host Panel, Keynote at Surround 2003 Conference

New York City (October 31, 2003)--Grammy Award-winning producer Phil Ramone will be doing double duty at the Surround 2003 Conference, which is presented by United Entertainment Media and is taking place at Los Angeles' Beverly Hilton Hotel on December 11-12. Not only will he be delivering the keynote address at 1:30 p.m. on the second day of the show, but he will also be hosting the Surround Mixing Engineer's Forum at 11:15 a.m. on the first day of the conference.

The topic of the forum is "The Future Is Now," and Ramone is planning on including a who's who of the top surround sound engineers, including such recording luminaries as Ed Cherney, George Massenburg and Elliot Scheiner. "This is going to be a pretty exclusive group of engineers who I know well and are truly the architects of 5.1," states Ramone.

The premise behind the panel is that, as Ramone says, "In the past, 5.1 was talked about in esoteric terms, and often was not available or was so expensive that you need to be in another financial game. We're in that financial game now. I think the most important thing for all of us now is the high quality of the mix.

"We're here to make major league statements and accomplishments because if it is good--and it can be good--and the manufacturers and everyone cares about it, we have to set the fence really high so we can give to the public what they really deserve."

In addition to high-quality surround music, Ramone also feels the public deserves to hear some classic films with the dynamic soundfield surround sound can create. "My dream is to take the early movies of the '30s, '40s, '50s and reissue them in a 5.1 format. I'd put the orchestra note-for-note in there and, through great technology, keep the voices right where they were--the Fred Astaires, Gene Kellys. If this isn't done, those movies will die in the history bin instead of being seen in a whole new light. It would be a tremendous reconstruction job, but I want to do that. It's one of the gifts I want to give back to young people. It shouldn't lay dormant."

Ramone's recent surround music work includes a 5.1 remix of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks that was released on hybrid Super Audio CD by Sony Music. He is currently working on surround DVD-Audio remixes of Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints and Graceland.

Surround 2003 Conference
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