Mike Einziger had an idea. A vision. An epiphany that could wind up revolutionizing the way people consume a live performance. Imagine watching a concert and hearing a perfect mix of drums, bass, guitar, synths, wheels of steel and vocals in your headphones. You may think – Dude, I already do that everyday on YouTube. Now picture yourself at a venue, standing in front of a band and achieving a sonic dose of music delivered from your phone to your earbuds – at a live show. That’s what Einziger and the folks over at Mixhalo have already put in process and they believe this will take the user experience to a whole different level.
Mike explained what Mixhalo is and how it works. He tells Sound Vapors, “Mixhalo is a proprietary wireless technology platform that allows audiences at live events such as concerts or sporting events (to) basically, tap directly into the sound board and receive an audio stream directly from the sound board to your phone. So you can listen to it in a pair of headphones or earbuds or whatever of your choice.” That sounds easy enough, right? The behind the scenes of research and development was not an easy task.
Einziger continues, “We built Mixhalo to solve a bunch of technological problems or overcome a bunch of technological hurdles because standard enterprise wi-fi deployment or cellular data streaming, won’t allow for an audio signal to get to a phone fast enough. You might be able to do it for one or two or three people at a time on an enterprise wi-fi or cellular, but to do it at scale, meaning to a large group of people to many devices at the same time – those technologies just don’t allow for that. So we had to literally invent our own solution that would allow for an audio signal to be streamed in real time, more or less real time to a large group of devices.”
I attended the Mixhalo presentation at the 2020 NAMM and it was an impressive display of their technology. They turned off the house P.A. and when the two guitarists from Polyphia began their performance – without your earbuds in, it was dead silent in the room, save the sound of guitar picks hitting the strings with almost no sound. When you put your buds back into your ears, you were treated to the sound of insane guitar play, that filled the sound with no noticeable delay. To take it one step further, Einziger and Mixhalo co-founder and wife, Ann-Marie Simpson-Einziger put on an equally impressive display of music of their own, consisting of Mike’s melodic, effects driven guitar and Ann-Marie’s expert level violin. This was all simultaneous and when you switched channels you could hear either performance with no interference. It was sort of mind blowing to see and hear in person.
Einziger has been known for his innovative and creative guitar skills with his band Incubus. I’ve been a fan for two decades and have been in awe of his writing skills. But honestly, this Mixhalo stuff might be even more impressive.. Well, okay.. I don’t want to get too crazy. I mean, Make Yourself and Morning View are among my Top 100 albums ever recorded. Ever. But I hope that puts my excitement for Mixhalo in even more perspective.
When our conversation turned towards the Incubus catalog, I asked Mike if he had any favorite albums or even memories of making an album that stood out to him. Understandably, it would be hard for any artist to choose a specific song or album but Mike talked about the time they recorded Morning View. He told me, “The experience of making our album Morning View was a really special time for us. We had worked really hard, traveled extensively and played hundreds and hundreds of concerts. I feel like we really found out identity as a band versus just sort of emulating our influences. I had a really broad vision for recording an album in a non-studio environment. I loved the idea of sort of commandeering a large space that maybe wasn’t meant for making music but was conducive to that idea. You know, bringing in all of the recording equipment. I had worked in studios prior to that and I just loved the process of making recordings and I fell in love with that idea.”
Einziger continues, “The fact that we followed through on that and found a beautiful place to make music and we wrote and recorded the entire album in this great house that overlooked the ocean in Malibu. It was just sort of a really exciting time where a lot of things came together and I just look back on that very fondly.” The fans do as well. The band put the making of Morning View on DVD and it was nice to hear the stories behind the visuals of the video.
We talked more extensively about Mixhalo and some the Incubus songs but one song I always loved was one that Mike put on his MySpace page well over a decade ago. The song was called Golden and it was a great piece of music. I always wondered what happened to that song and I asked Mike about it. After some thinking about the name of the documentary the band put out, he confirmed that it was a part of the soundtrack for the Look Alive documentary.
That was music to my ears.
You can hear my entire conversation with Mike Einziger by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or by watching it on YouTube. Mike is such a talented and creative artist and even with everything that he’s accomplished.. Hell, this guy might be just getting started. Stay tuned.
-Tommy Marz
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