Waves 2021
Virtual Conference

It’s all you, in the spotlight, with the customer CEO and CTO onsite at their offices.  Your presentation begins with a sizzle video that you spent weeks producing featuring an uplifting orchestral track.  Pull out your laptop, plug in to the conference room video system, and confidently tap the press spacebar.  No sound.  The CEO nonchalantly informs you that this conference room doesn’t have audio.  Calmly, you turn the laptop to face the two c-suiters and resume the sizzle from the beginning.  The laptop sound featuring Waves Nx Speakers and MaxxAudio expands to fill the space like a portable home theater system.  The orchestral track crescendo inspires as planned, with no additional equipment required.

Bob from finance is an audio/video gear geek. He has a large microphone that hangs upside down between his laptop screen and his desk chair. None of us have the nerve to tell Bob that the mic blocks his face during video calls. The thing is, when Bob signs into Zoom, it sounds like a talk show host has joined the call. It’s a big voice. He always starts with the same resounding, “hello!” Even though he looks odd with his bright LED lighted microphone hanging in front of him, Bob sounds commanding and clear. So when I heard about the new Proximity Mic feature from Waves, I got excited. Now I can get that close and clear broadcast-quality sound too, just without the ungainly microphone blocking my camera.

Melancholy day.  Why not indulge and make it more melancholy?  Sophie opens up her laptop paired to the Bluetooth speaker she got for Christmas.  She searches for Norah Jones “Don’t Know Why” on YouTube.  Guaranteed tears.  But the feeling is ruined two minutes into the song when the soulful piano solo distorts on the cheap speaker!  Sophie knows what to do: Control panel -> sound setup -> switch to built-in speakers.  Sophie’s laptop features Perceptual Distortion Reduction from Waves that surgically reduces the loudness of distortion prone sounds, like Norah’s piano, while maintaining the fullness of the music.  Replay from the beginning. Sadness redux.

On the rig, 40-stories over the Gulf, and the wind is picking up.  The bit is worn out.  That means pulling the pipe.  Time to trip out.  But the pipe is sticking and the foreman needs to conference in to corporate on the mainland.  Between the wind and the machinery it’s loud up here, even in the control room.  Not a problem.  Foreman has a tablet running Waves Noise Guard with Neural Voice Activity Detection.  Commercial grade noise reduction means corporate can give the Toolpusher critical information when it counts.  Real work, real situations, real solutions with Waves MaxxVoice.

It’s Isaac’s usual bedtime, but after a crazy day he wants to unwind with Mission Impossible: Fallout… again. But his wife is already fast asleep in the next room and MI6 demands his home theater system. This movie is too big for headphones. Instinctively, Isaac reaches for his laptop with Waves Nx Speakers and fires up Netflix.  Nx envelops Isaac in panoramic sound that expands beyond the screen while Adaptive Tuning Optimization ensures that Isaac can still feel the bass and hear the details, even at this low, considerate-husband volume. Tom Cruise is actually flying a helicopter. His wife hasn’t stirred. Mission accomplished.