Other World Computing is proud to sponsor the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a state-of-the-art audio and video recording facility on wheels. OWC customers, partners and employees were treated to a special event on the evening of March 17 when the Bus rolled into OWC Austin’s parking lot for the night.
The Lennon Bus operates as a nonprofit program that provides hands-on experiences for students of all ages. Now in its 18th year of touring, the Bus features the latest audio and video technology, gear and products. The Bus is currently on a 75th anniversary tour in what would have been John Lennon’s 75th birthday.
The Bus is highly adaptable and designed to provide students, their schools and communities with performances, demonstrations, remote recordings and studio sessions customized for the needs, levels of experience and interest.
The “always-on-the-road” schedule combined with the unusual requirements of operating a fully mobile recording studio, presents a unique set of challenges for the Bus crew and the technology that powers the Bus’s exciting programs. Because the productions generate huge amounts of data, a reliable, high-performance storage solution is an absolutely essential requirement. OWC is proud to be able to provide the foundation of the Bus’ storage needs.
Underpinning the latest Mac Pro powerhouse that drives the Bus’ mobile studio is the OWC Mercury Electra SSD as the primary production drives. Each of the Bus’ production Macs is paired with 4 x 960GB Mercury Electra SSDs in lightning-fast RAID-0 configuration. These are housed in a Sonnet rack enclosure as the main workflow drives, delivering reliability, flexibility, and outstanding performance.
According to Bus audio engineer Bryce Quig-Hartman, OWC SSDs gives them several advantages. “Sure, they’re fast, but also we just can’t use spinning disks while the bus is in motion and we need to be working while the bus is in motion” he says, “so having SSDs is a necessity, and that’s something that OWC has been able to provide.” Thanks to OWC, the engineers no longer need to shut down while the bus is moving, meaning they can get more work done, quicker and, at the bottom line, give greater opportunities to more students.
Alongside the Electra SSDs, the crew also utilizes the ultra-portable performance of the OWC Mercury Elite Pro mini, which Bryce describes as their “bread and butter.” These give the Bus team amazing flexibility to work anywhere. Bus-powered and robust, the Elite Pro mini is the perfect drive for loading a full project’s data for quick deployment in any location.
To cap it off, the Bus is also using OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual minis in RAID-1 mode for reliable long-term backup, as well as the awesome power of the ThunderBay 4 in projects requiring the high-bandwidth capabilities of Thunderbolt 2.
We couldn’t be happier here at OWC to be able to provide a complete data storage package delivering consistent flexibility and dependable performance so the engineers on the Bus can concentrate on doing what they do best – bringing music and video into the hearts and minds of young people across America.
More information on the John Lennon Education Tour Bus is available here.
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