Our friends at Source Elements, the team behind Source-Connect and Source-Connect Now have made it onto the BBC here in the UK.

Unsigned band, Electric Litany weren’t expecting any response when they sent their first album to one of their musical heroes, Alan Parsons, the engineer behind some of the most celebrated albums of the 20th Century, including the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, but much to their surprise Alan himself skyped them to say he liked their ethereal, melancholic sound and wanted to help them. The problem was they were 5,500 miles apart and the band didn’t have the money to travel. Richard Simic, the band’s drummer and co-founder.

“The only problem was that Alan was in Santa Barbara and going over to his studio to record our second album would have cost us about $100,000 [£60,000]. That was money we just didn’t have. Alan suggested we record the album in the UK and he would help us using some kind of real-time remote recording software,” 

While the band was setting up their equipment at Foel Studio in mid-Wales - a recording venue for bands as diverse as the Stranglers, Scritti Politti and Klaxons - Alan Parsons was monitoring proceedings from Santa Barbara via tablet computer video link, advising on microphone positions, instrument choices using Source-Connect. Richard Simic was delighted…

“It was like he was in the studio with us, getting live feedback was invaluable.”

Rebekah Wilson who founded Source Elements, the company behind the Source-Connect, told us…

“What is unique about our software is that we restore and replace any missing digital packets of data automatically, so there is no disruption to the timeline. This gives the sense of near real-time, live recording.”

As we demonstrated exclusively here at Pro Tools Expert, Source Elements is also rolling out a simple Chrome browser-based version of its software, Source-Connect Now enabling musicians and voice-over artists to record and share high-quality audio very simply. Rebekah told us that monthly subscription costs will eventually be about $10, which will make remote collaboration accessible to everyone.