The start of September. The start of a new topic! We're going out on a limb this month and doing something really different. "No one is an island." "You don't work in a vacuum." "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." We are but one small piece in a complex system that builds art. I know many sound professionals who are happy to talk about becoming story … [Read more...]
The Sound of the Room
Whether we stop to consciously think about it or not, acoustics has a huge impact on the work we do. At the most basic level, knowledge of the playback environment or medium affects how we approach a given project: broadcast, web, theatrical, home video, conference floor, etc. Maybe we add more bass for web distributed pieces, or reduce the dynamic range slightly for a product … [Read more...]
Public Service Announcement Regarding iLok
In case you haven't seen the information burning its way across social media yet, there have been some issues with the latest updates to the iLok system. While they're adding some very useful features in a new downloadable "client" program, they've hit some unexpected stumbling blocks on the back-end. At some point over the weekend, they updated their databases to work with the … [Read more...]
Compressor Gain Control Principles
Herbert Goldberg has an interesting article up about compressors and the though process behind designing their inner workings. That fits nicely into this month's theme, don't you think? Technically speaking the same principles are used in audio signal limiting and compression processors but just the transfer curves and envelope follower settings are different. Ultra fast … [Read more...]
Dynamics…What’s Your Range?
For June, we've chosen to focus on the theme of "Dynamics." As the title of this post implies, we don't think of this topic as narrow or specific. There are two obvious directions this theme can go. We could start a discussion about the use of dynamics processing: compressors, limiters, expanders, or transient enhancers. How do we use these in the design phase to mold a … [Read more...]
DesigningSound.org Now Recruiting Volunteers
DesigningSound.org is on the lookout for capable News Editors and Contributing Editors for our blog. This is an unpaid, volunteer position (just like the rest of us). DesigningSound.org has no revenue so please don’t apply expecting a 401k. For News Editors: we're looking for content aggregators who will keep up on interesting articles, editorials and library releases; … [Read more...]
In Consideration of Time…
April has ended and May has begun. No matter what we do, or how we may try to control it, time continues to march forward at its own pace...regardless of our needs or wants. Last month, we had a very specific theme. While there was ample opportunity to explore different approaches and uses, everything focused on a particular type of toolset. We thought it would be interesting … [Read more...]