Kid Pan Alley Use Waves Nx for On-the-Spot Mixing SolutionThe non-profit songwriting program Kid Pan Alley has again turned to products from Waves Audio for their digital tools. Paul Reisler, artistic director and founder of Kid Pan Alley, uses Waves Nx Virtual Mix Room over headphones as a perfect solution for recording and mixing on a tight schedule. Kid Pan Alley's mission is to inspire and empower children to work together to become creators of their own music and to rekindle creativity as a core value in education. With over 2,500 songs written and over 35,000 child participants across the US, the songs resulting from Kid Pan Alley's programs have been recorded by artists such as Amy Grant, Sissy Spacek, Delbert McClinton, Cracker, Kix Brooks, Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Corey Harris, Suzy Bogguss, and many others. Kid Pan Alley's recorded work has earned many accolades from all corners of the industry, including a Grammy nomination. Reisler comments, "I've been using the Waves Nx every week now to mix our live concerts. Each week, we write eight songs with eight classes of kids in an elementary school. We do an afternoon concert for the school and an evening concert for the community. As you can imagine, there is a lot of noise in a school, so I have to mix the afternoon concert on site with headphones. We then burn CDs for sale at the evening concert." Waves Nx Virtual Mix Room over Headphones is a virtual monitoring plugin that simulates the ideal acoustics of a high-end mix room -- inside your headphones. Powered by Waves' Nx technology, this plugin lets the user hear, on headphones, the same natural depth, natural reflections, and panoramic stereo image the user would be hearing from speakers in an actual room. Waves Nx turns headphones into a more reliable mixing and monitoring tool by letting the user hear everything with real-world dimension, rather than flat in their head. Insert the plugin on the master buss, and hear all the elements of the mix accurately laid out in space, just as the user would in the sweet spot of a great-sounding professional mix room. Reisler adds, "Using Nx, the sound really opened up -- more air in the sound. There was greater clarity and I could really hear where each instrument sat in the stereo field. Nx took a decent pair of headphones and made them sound like a $500 set, and since I can hear more detail, I can mix better. But what I really love about Nx is that there is less headphone fatigue. After a week of writing songs with overly excited kids, fatigue is a real issue. Additionally, I just finished writing a musical, and George Mason University is currently workshopping it. At rehearsals, I will have to do quick edits, on the spot of the backing tracks, and using the Nx will make it easier and more fun to do, especially with all that is going on around me." Reisler summarizes, "When using Nx, it wakes up the sound and it wakes me up as well, resulting in better mixes, less fatigue, and more fun because it just sounds better. I love the way it tracks your head movement; it makes the mixing experience feel so much more real!" 
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