It’s hard to believe so much could be packed into three days. If you were lucky enough to make it to Integrate 09 in Sydney and if you’re anything like me, well, you’re probably still buzzing. Some of this country’s and, indeed, the world’s brightest audio brains came together for the show, joining the biggest audio manufacturers and developers for Australia’s audio event of the year.

Leading the charge was legend of the industry, George Massenburg. It was George’s first trip to Australia and he hit the ground running (and didn’t stop) – what with his headline presentation, his two marathon mixing masterclasses, as well as appearing on AT’s Remote Mixing & Mastering and Tech forums. George is an extraordinary individual: he’s the mix engineer’s mix engineer, the tech’s tech, the audio designer’s audio designer… in other words he can happily dance between just about every audio discipline – creative and technical – with panache. He’s passionate, he’s gracious, he’s super knowledgeable… and he was an absolute inspiration to all who met him and heard him speak at Integrate.

I mentioned the Tech Forum earlier, which included a rare meeting of two of the world’s foremost technical minds: George Massenburg and Daniel Weiss. The Swiss digital maestro was also in Australia for Integrate 09 ostensibly to talk about a new converter design he’s been working on with Oz/Malaysian audiophile startup company, Maya Acoustics. The flagship converter can be yours for $250,000… I kid you not – less for cash. AT contributor (and mastering engineer-about-town) Adam McElnea was more chuffed to hear about Daniel Weiss’s appearance than most. Sonamax’s Weiss EQ had just packed up and Daniel was only too pleased to bring the parts required in his hand luggage – nice result!

But to dwell on the names Weiss and Massenburg too much would downplay the sterling work of the other (home grown) panelists and seminars. The PA Shootout panel discussion – ably moderated by Auditoria’s Scott Willsallen – began disarmingly with a psychoacoustic sleight of hand to demonstrate just how subjective system comparisons can be… and showed no signs of let-up as TAG’s Tony Russo confounded attendees with predictive plots of his wife’s chest X-rays! Okay, maybe you had to be there.

Possibly the most anticipated slot of the three days was the Stav Session… and he didn’t let the standing-room-only crowd down. Serious recording and mixing tricks were interspersed with magic tricks in a slick and seamless demonstration of how audio rarely behaves in ways you might expect… and, equally, how Stav rarely behaves in ways you might expect. Priceless!

The Sounds of Australia panel discussion was also a highlight. Held in the AFTRS theatre with full cinema sound, some 100 professionals, enthusiasts and students sat spellbound as they heard the story behind the soundtrack of this country’s most lavish (and highest grossing) movie of all time. Like some knockabout platoon of audio soldiers still reeling from their tour of duty, David Hirschfelder, Wayne Pashley, Simon Leadley and Angus Robertson, spoke of frantically re-conforming audio to new edits throughout the night only to discover after two hours kip that Baz had changed the whole thing again – this went on for months. The ordeal sounded like a test of endurance more than anything. Clearly Baz must be one hell of a charismatic bloke to repeatedly lead these guys into battle again and again… “Listen fellas, I know I almost killed you last time, but I promise you, this time it’ll be different”.

Greg Simmons had a busy show. Simmo’s ability to unpack sophisticated audio concepts in ways we can all understand is only matched by his limitless reserve of lame jokes. His Studio Fundamentals sessions were sold out and there was a lot of interest in his Sounds of Asia ‘slide show’… erm, archeo-ethno-audio-musicological multimedia presentation. Simmo has once again nipped off to Asia to stick a microphone in front of more street musos, and we wish him luck.

If you missed Josh Pyke, Rick O’Neil, Wayne Connolly, Paul McKercher, George Massenburg and Andy Stewart talking about the outsourcing of mixing and mastering duties, then you also missed something pretty special.

In fact, if you didn’t manage to get to Sydney for Integrate 09 there were hundreds of reasons to feel pretty darn miserable as you read this: the software workshops, all the new gear on show, the live music, the love in the room… AT’s foosball table! But don’t fret, we had so much fun we’re going to do it all again next year. See you in 2010! – Christopher Holder.