Let’s talk about surround sound systems for a quick second, shall we? A modern surround sound system, in its simplest form, consists of six channels; Left, Center, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround, and the Low Frequency Effect channel. The first five channels are all fairly self-explanatory, denoting the location of the speaker itself and the channel’s … [Read more...]
Don’t Panic and Carry A Towel: When Things Go Horribly, Horribly Wrong
As April comes to an end and we wrap up our topic for the month, “broken”, I wanted to take a moment and share something that I learned when I was first starting out, and something that I find myself having to remember quite often: how to react when everything starts to break. We depend on a lot of complex technologies in our day-to-day lives, some more intricate and … [Read more...]
LA Underground – An Interview with Charles Maynes
I recently had a chance to sit down with sound designer and sound FX recordist Charles Maynes and chat about his new “LA Underground” sound library, available from Rabbit Ears Audio. Inspired by the gritty and seedy Los Angeles shown in countless films, “LA Underground” is a 10 GB collection of ambiences from all over the city, from the industrial centers near the LA River to … [Read more...]
(Mis)adventures in Cat Recording
About three years ago, on a whim, I adopted a 6 month old kitten. I had dealt with cats before at friends’ and family’s houses, but had never owned one, and Luna (short for “Lunatic”) was full of surprises. After her initial "moving in” period, in which she hid under the bed for nearly a week, I discovered that Luna was an exceedingly outspoken individual that needed to make … [Read more...]
Review: Twisted Tools METAMORPH
METAMORPH is the latest sample library from Twisted Tools, makers of the designed sample libraries as well as some fun and unique Reaktor ensembles. With sounds designed by BJM Mario Bajardi and Komplex (Iter-Research), METAMORPH "takes heavily processed violins, pianos and acoustic instruments and morphs them into impacts, sci-fi atmospheres, user interface elements and … [Read more...]
An Interview with John Roesch
In over 30 years working in sound, Foley artist John Roesch has amassed an impressive list of credits, including major films like "Inception" and "The Matrix" and games like "Final Fantasy X" and "Dead Space." With over 400 credits to his name, John was awarded the MPSE's Career Achievement Award earlier this year. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with John on his … [Read more...]
The Dialog Re-Assign Workflow
My first exposure to noise reduction processing was with Waves X-Noise, working clip-by-clip, finding a snippet of noise in the clear, setting the noise profile, then processing the clip before moving to the next one. This offline processing method, while effective, would end up taking a lot of time, especially on long-form projects. Similarly, if you had a processed clip that … [Read more...]