CRAS Grad Jared Stansill Visits CRAS
CRAS Grad and owner of ProAudioLA.com stopped by CRAS last week and had an after hours presentation with our student body chapter of AES.
Our AES student body is the most active AES chapter in the US, and we are proud to have another one of our grads stop by and share their success story with us.
Since graduation in 2006 from the Conservatory, Jared went on to work a number of jobs throughout the audio engineering field, and is currently the owner and operator of ProAudioLA.com, a pro audio shop that specializes in custom cables, snakes, gear sales, acoustic design for studios, consulting, and much more!
“I really took advantage of my time here,” Jared begins his presentation. “If you’re here attending these sorts of events after hours, booking rooms as much as possible, spending as much time as you can here [at CRAS], talking with and bouncing ideas off of other people, pushing buttons and turning knobs, then you’re the kind of student that I was. You need that hands on experience. You get out what you put in.” Jared goes on to talk about his journey through the program, and to what he does now on the daily.
10 years after graduating, the comprehensive training that our audio recording school offers exposed Jared to a wide spectrum of skills, many of which were invaluable in his journey to creating the type of career he has always wanted to make for himself.
Beginning his career Jared was recording secondary audio, or the Spanish-language dubs for TV shows. “I worked on a bunch of ABC shows like Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy…Basically, I was operating Pro Tools. There was a Spanish director behind me, who was looking at a Spanish script. Out of one speaker was the English audio, and out of the other speaker was the voice actor speaking in Spanish from the booth behind me. Basically I would just navigate around the tapes, recording little bits of dialogue replacement in Spanish, and then later mixing it and laying it back.”
This is just one of the many duties that audio engineers can stay busy with on a regular basis. Our Post Production curriculum focuses on all the aspects of getting audio recorded and synced up with video, from television commercials, to shows, to movies. Students even get some experience operating HD video cameras during in-class sessions recreating documentary-style videos.
When asked about what his job at ProAudioLA consists of – “We just decided as we grew. to us with questions, and that’s what led from us just selling cables to selling equipment too. People would be asking us questions about gear. I want to hook this up, what do I need? I’m looking at this new converter and I want to integrate it with this new patch bay, and I’m confused about the cabling, help!” Jared’s company understands studio engineer’s needs because of his experience and knowledge gained through CRAS.
Basic cable repair is one of the myriad skills we teach at CRAS. Understanding how cables work, how to repair them or make your own, is an incredibly useful skill that not every audio engineer possesses, and not every school teaches this. With this understanding of how cables and audio gear work together, understanding how signal flow works, Jared was able to build an entire company, which employs himself and 15 other people.
But they do much more than just custom cables – the provide solutions. If you have a question, they are the ones who can not only answer that question, but give you the best options, design a plan, and execute that plan for you. Now that is the power of true knowledge!
Jared also provided a great insight into the wide variety of jobs found in the audio industry. Building custom cables, custom studio installations, understanding acoustic insulation, studio design, gear research and sales, signal flow, conversions and compatibility between different gear old and new – Jared’s done it all! Plus, being the one who was called upon to build EDM artist Steve Aoki’s custom new digs is quite a compliment!
