Live sound that's hot off the desk

SMALL PRINT:"I'M REALLY excited about where we're going to go with this because I feel we're only scratching the surface . . . and I like working on things I really believe in." Cathal Furey of Irish music-technology company 45sound.comhas a right to be excited.

The concept is simple. For years, fans have been uploading videos of live gigs with rubbish audio. But upload it to 45sound, and the video will be matched with the sound of the gig recorded by a sound engineer and synchronised with audio-matching software. Hey presto, loads of videos from the same gig with desk-perfect sound. Bands are happy because the videos sound good, and fans are happy because their amateur videos are improved.

45sound’s genesis is with Northern band And So I Watch You From Afar, whom Furey recorded live in Whelan’s in Dublin in late 2010. The band’s sound engineer Andrew Coles is now the company’s live audio consultant. Furey went on to record sets at the Hard Working Class Heroes music festival, which provided the real test as to whether longer videos could be audio matched by 45sound’s software developers and audio researchers, Dan Barry and Mikel Gainza. A fourth company member, John McAuley, developed the online community end of the business, and this year 45sound came third in the Music Accelerator competition at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

“The Irish music scene has been so good to us all the way through. We couldn’t have done anything without all the help and goodwill from Irish bands,” Furey says. 45sound’s basic uploader iPhone and Android apps will be joined by a more sophisticated next-generation app in the next month, and Furey is also enthusiastic about mobilising music fans in the Irish diaspora internationally to spread the word.