History
Founded in 1996 in Philadelphia, 30 years later NewSound Productions is still going strong in Toronto.
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February , 1996
Construction starts for NewSound Productions’ first studio facility in downtown Philadelphia.
October, 1996
NewSound Productions is fully operational serving audio and musical professionals in the tri-state area.
April, 1999
Yoshiko Matsui wrote and recorded the vocals for Hiroshima on NewSound owner Mark Knox’s debut CD, Places. She has released a few of her own Jazz CDs in Japan.
May, 1999
The late Grover Washington, Jr. was on hand to play on Valdez In the Country for Gerald Veasley’s 4th CD – Love Letters. Mark also engineered and played keyboards on the CD.
April, 2000
Saxophonist Chris Farr played on Van Nguyen’s CD, Xuan Tui. NewSound owner Mark arranged all the music tracks.
December, 2002
Alan Horseradish and Barbara Toothpick like to get comfy when they record. They did two of their CDs at NewSound.
February, 2003
Drummer Jim Miller tries out some new single-head drums for Mark’s CD, Places.
July, 2004
Mark joins the audio team for the Philadephia Orchestra’s summer concerts at the Mann Music Center.
Audust, 2004
Drummer / composer Jim Miller works with bassist Tyrone Brown while tracking for Jim’s debute CD, Miller Time.
April, 2005
NewSound moves to new digs in the Architect’s Building at 17th & Chestnut in Centre City Philadelphia.
November, 2005
Doc Gibbs lays down some conga parts for Mark’s CD, Places. You may recognize him as the former band leader on the Emeril Live Show.
January 2006
Mark provides live sound for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s “Sound All Around” series that invites local school children to come and learn about orchestral music.
December, 2006
Mark releases his CD “Places” featuring a who’s who of Philly Jazz players.
March, 2007
NewSound is asked to handle the live recording of Papo Vazquez’s performance at the Painted Bride in Philly. Turns out the resulting CD, Marooned/Aislado was nominated for a Grammy Award – Best Latin Jazz Album
June, 2007
Jill Scott stopped by for a quick looping session for the Tyler Perry film, Why Did I Get Married? Engineer Jeff Chestek handled the session.
June, 2007
You’ve heard of three tenors? We had three sopranos do their thing for Jesse Padgett’s CD, ReInvented. Nine singers were used and after a few post production audio tricks, out came a full cathedral choir.
September, 2007
So long Philly . . . NewSound owner Mark Knox decides to pack it up and move to Toronto. (If you want to know why, invite Mark for a beer and plan to spend a couple of hours) It was a crazy move.
March, 2008
After a long immigration process, an international move and lots of site surveys, NewSound Productions found a new home in the Corktown District of downtown Toronto. Now, all we had to do was build a new studio in this empty space . . . .
July, 2008
. . . . and here it is. New floor – new counters – new racks. Newsound was ready to serve clients.
April, 2008
In the meantime, some location work fills in the gaps – like audio support for Blue Jays broadcasts. Here, a view from the broadcast booth at the Rogers Centre.
February, 2009
NewSound owner Mark Knox mixed a show featuring concert Theremin virtuoso Dorit Chrysler for the 9th Wavelength Music Series in Toronto.
Jul, 2010
Bassist Gerald Veasley and drummer Richard Waller III stopped by NewSound on the way to Gerald’s Bass Boot Camp in Aurora Ontario. Part of the Aurora Jazz Festival.
April, 2011
NewSound provides audio support for the French broadcast of Ontario’s first UFC event at a sold out Rogers Centre.
March, 2012
The NDP Convention, 2012. NewSound was there to provide the Press Pool audio for Tri-Lite TV Productions.
January, 2013
Mark starts composing and selling production music worldwide. Since then, several tracks have landed in films, commercials and corporate campaigns.
November, 2014
Sideline camera at an Argos game.
Mark was working on many of sports broadcasts after relocating to Toronto.
October, 2015
Mark with Bob Costas in the broadcast booth during a Blue Jays & Rangers playoff at Rogers Centre.
October, 2016
It’s not often you have a whole hockey arena to yourself. We were there to test the new virtual billboard technology.
May, 2017
The NewSound Cats started out as a small collection and have grown in numbers through the years. They guard the patch bay.
August, 2017
Still doing audio support for sporting events. This time it was the Rogers Cup.
August, 2018
Victor Wang joins the NewSound team – not only as a talented audio tech and musician, but also as a business partner.
August, 2019
A second room dubbed “The Blue Room” is designed and built exclusivly for music composition. A powerful MAC Pro loaded with the latest state-of-the-art virtual instruments.
September, 2020
Finally, we add a Neumann U87 to our arsenal of microphones. The most important link in the audio chain, this mic is considered THE global standard.
March, 2021
A couple of new hardware additions – The Manley Core mic preamp and SSL Fusion.
July, 2022
It’s our new MAC Studio M2, 32GB, 12-core running Logic Pro, Pro Tools and Cuebase along with some of the best audio plugins available.
March, 2023
These bad boys sound amazing. Our new Hedd Type 20 MK2 time-aligned monitors. How did we ever mix without them?
April, 2023
A long awaited trip to the Motown Museum in Detroit. Every engineer, composer and musician should make this journey.
This is the control room that produced hundreds of hits.
February, 2024
Mic line-up:
Neumann U67, U 87, U102, U102
Soundelux U195
AT Pro-37, AT Pro-37
July, 2024
The Blue Room gets an upgrade to a MAC Studio M1 Max and numerous new virtual instruments.
May, 2025
A trip to London is not complete without visiting the famous Abyy Road Studios.
March, 2026
Jeremy Voltz lays down the lead vocal for Mark’s tune “Hope Will Find A Way.”
Coming soon . . . .