Hi Steve!

Thanks for your kind thoughts regarding Mid/Side thinking. Actually, you need to thank Bob Ludwig, who turned me on to it as a way of thought about stereo, as opposed to just a trick used for a certain coincident stereo microphone configuration. Also, thanks to IzoTope, for a beautiful implementation of the concept in Ozone4.

Thanks Bob! Thanks Izo!

Best regards,

Dave

Mr. Moulton,
I meandered my way over here from an article of yours that was posted on iZotope's web site concerning Mid/Side thinking, and was compelled to comment. I'm about as green in the art/science of mastering as can be found, and have thrown myself head first into this adventure mainly through the necessity of mixing and mastering a demo album for my rather diverse 4 piece modern rock band.

The many marathon reading sessions on the subjects of mixing and mastering have taught me quite a lot. However, your article on Mid/Side thinking really struck a chord (no pun intended). It eloquently put to words what I've been chasing for decades, since my first home-made analog circuit I assembled on stripboard back when I was 16 that essentially amplified the difference signal and cut out the Mid content! I've been making mix tapes and CDs for personal listening using this 9V gadget of mine (and a recent C++ all-digital adaptation) and suddenly I feel vindicated! No more shameful sessions of digging into commercial mixes spanning 30-40 years listening for deep-buried details! I've been a closet Mid-Sider for decades and have suddenly seen my affliction given an official name, and I can now be proud of it!

I'll no doubt be spending a great deal of time on your site soaking up as much knowledge from the multitude of articles, so I'll issue my thanks in advance. In the meantime, I have some fresh Stereo material to go listen to... digging into L-R material no longer seems as illicit and forbidden as it used to. LOL!
All the best.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, Rob! I'm glad you're finding the website and articles useful. That was my hope!

Best regards,

Dave

Dave,
Thanks for all the great information. I think I've learned more from reading your papers, as well as those of your associates, than I have from the many books I've read, classes I've attended and the evening internship I did some years ago. Your articles have cleared up a lot of conflicting information I've acquired over time and they translate well to real world application too.

Best wishes,
Rob

Thanks for the kind thoughts! I'm glad my efforts have proved useful for you! Keep smiling, and remember, up is still louder.

Dave

Dave,

I'm neck deep in cables and wire, soldering iron in my hand... and the pink noise emanating from the mixing stage next door makes me think of those days back at Berklee nearly 20 years ago, taking your ear training classes in the evenings in that small little classroom with the super green shag carpet... Loved that carpet!

Roger Fearing and I are currently wiring the new mixing stages and classrooms for the new Cinematic Arts Building at USC, and often your name has come up in conversation... The things we've learned from you are still saving our butts to this day. I can't possibly thank you enough for making our audio education so fun and inspiring! If you ever get to see the mixing rooms in the George Lucas Building, just know that your wisdom helped Roger and I make it through that installation! Thanks Dave!

-Ken Miller

Hi Dave -- long-time follower and big fan. I love "Total Recording", "Golden Ears" "Relative Pitch" and "Perfect Pitch... I have them all. I'm currently trying to hunt down a copy of Volume 1 of the Platinum Series lectures. Can you sell me one? Thanks!

And Happy New year!!!

Dave,

I spent New Year's Day reading your ear training tutorial posted on the AES website, and your many informative and enlightening articles here. "So Ya Wanna Learn About Audio?" brought back memories of my first week at Brandeis U, which permitted undergrads of the liberal arts to design their own major. I always loved music and science, so I promptly went to the admin building an announced my intention to concentrate in Acoustics, combining courses from the music and physics departments. The advisor looked confused, and after some further discussion concluded that the best thing for me would be to transfer to MIT or "some other technical school."

Happy New Year to all!

Dave,
What a kick to see and hear of your successes. I always knew you would be the ultimate music-geek.

Your article in the Dec 3 TV Tech was very interesting but you left out one point that ticks me off. The LOUDNESS of some commercials. The producers must be living in the 1960's.
They forget that we now have remotes and can either lower the sound or MUTE it with out getting off the couch. I have my remote near me at all times
I do enjoy reading your thoughts
Happy holidays and a healthy New Year to you and yours.
Gene Karlin

Dave, It's been so long and we have gone so many different ways, though both taught at one SUNY or another. I still listen to and play the recordings I made with you at Dondisound around 73-74 or so and still appreciate the work you did. Thank you. After a long hiatus I am back to playing and songwriting and hoping to get part of the career I gave up to teach.

My very best to you.

I just wanted to drop a line to say how much I'm loving reading all the articles on this site. It's such a wonderful thing to read thoughts and comments that go beyond the usual journalistic mumbo-jumbo. Insight just never seems to be a popular attraction.

I'm just a home enthusiast, dying to learn more about recordings and how to record better and all the cool arcanum of recording, most of what I read here is beyond my scope, but I love to learn by osmosis.

Thanks for making all this available!

Dave,

I was an MP&E student 1987-89, during which you took over the reins for Don Puluse. In addition to being a disciple of Wayne Wadhams and Robin Coxe-Yeldham,I also remember you fondly as someone with an unquenchable passion for the craft we were there to study. Perhaps my favorite memory was your signature closing in a message to the MP&E student body (was it a newsletter, or something like that?). Your favorite quotes -- most or all of which I suspect were yours. Things like, "Remember up is louder . . . " still stick with me, though I wish I could acquire a compendium of them all.

Anyway, I happened across your site in a journey "through the neighborhood." I hope all is fine and well with you.

Best regards,

Curt Johnson
Class of '89

Dave,

I just finished reading your recent article titled "The Great Lip-Sync Dilemma" in TV Technology. Based on my experiences as a station engineer you seemed to be right-on-the-mark.

One of the problems I have run into is the uncertain and variable video delay in HD video monitors. I have seen them range from 1/2 frame to 2 frames in the stuff currently being flogged to broadcasters. The home sets are a whole different story.

In an attempt to quantitatively measure lip sync in our studio plant on the cheap (one must be mindful of the reality of budgets) I created a 1 hour DVD full of single frame bars and tone - 14 frames of black and silence, one frame of bars and tone, etc. This makes it real easy to actually measure lip-sync errors using a dual channel storage scope. For studio cameras, a monitor playing the DVD was placed in front of one along with a Lav mic for audio and the results were compared at various places through our production and distribution chain.

At that point is became a simple matter to dial in audio delay. One surprising result was that the analog output of our Wheatstone D-9 required a slightly different delay as compared to the AES outputs.

Until some sort of magical, 100% reliable, auto correction device becomes available I can state that, at the very least, we are not making things worse by passing content through our plant.

Bob

This seems a nice site i must say. I once listened to a stereo system that was perfect. The imageing and everything was exactly right. You could be anywhere in the room and hear it identical and from the right direction like it was all in my brain in full 3d. I read something about equalization etc and i have my own theory on how sound works. A bit hard to explain but i believe that the interference patterns of refraction, if from exactly the same sound source then our ears receive a new accoustical pattern of the original. I also believe that trebble has a tendancy to take over and dominates the direction. If the acoutsics work out equal in frequency including direct/reflected sounds, then we locate and reconise as one instead of 2 different sound sources. I believe we allways have a biased directional positioning but with lots of tweeters we can focus an average and equal response around us in hrtf. Whilst im talking about hrtf. I had a old system about 20 years ago in which i spent plenty of time aiming for perfection using an equalizer. I actually suceeded and had perfect phantom imageing in full 3d and the only downfall was the way it twisted slightly biased to the sides when moved but the whole perspective moved together and it was all perfectly central even when right next to one speaker or even outside of the speakers. I best way i can describe the stereo imageing is to say imagine tieing a piece string from the speaker to the opposite ear so that you have a cross in the middle. As i walked to the sides the cross point would still be in the middle but it would twist but stay in same perspective. Stereo imaging would project the phantom out of the speakers torwards you aswell as left and right. Well even easier to explain would be 2 spot lights in a mist so they are visable. The point that the beams meet is where the sound apears to come from. The fact that my equalization was so level perfect (i got other peoples opionions and they all had the same effect). The trick i found to get the playback so good was to make each frequency level sound like another frequency level, part bass - part treble. The times it reached the ears and the angles gave a completely new frequency response but still with the same perspective but the response was symetrical and the crosstalk was actually part of the imageing in frequency. Imageine a few poles in the ground. From one angle they look as one but from another angle they look further apart. Now imagine 4 poles. As we move and see one set of poles change but The other ones change too at the same rate as we are moveing away from them too and there depth is a conterpart too. Now think of 2 poles exactly in our line of sight. We dont see them as 2 but now 1 because one is hiding behind. Canellation. Its a tricky thing to read and understand what i have wrote. I believe in order to locate a sound we need to hear it again and eliminate the differences accousticaly to determin direction (The same frequency again). I believe frequencys change When viewing from different angles but if sent from same location we get a constant acoustical frequency level which fixes the image within the response. I believe that directional sound is like me saying lets have a big circle and a small one and put the small circle somewhere within the big circle, its biased in direction. If the small circle was closer or further away from us then it apears different. Just like different sized buildings looking the same from an angle. Lets remember that things that are together would stay in their relevant scaleing perspective. I believe we hear it again so that all differences can be fully understandable to our brain.

Im almost certain that it was my equalization setup on playback that focused the sound from the speakers to my ears(illusion of position desite what frequency it was as the level was changed). Just like haveing 2 lots of same frequency representing as 1 but the time between them makes the original sound. The rest of the response is related the same but the difference is equalized so final acoustics, sounded like 1. Last thing i will mention was the ability for me to be able to put an object infront of my speakers and still hear it exactly the same without the sound apearing to be blocked. My theory is the sound has to reach at some time and acoutics and a symetrical acoutics can self equalise by using any combination of direct sound and/or refracted sound. Thanks for reading.

Ps, i enjoyed reading your information tonight about the phantom image etc and this is a great site, keep up the good work.

Hey dave about sings of life do you have copy of it you can upload to your computer and make into a rar file with all the info on the id3 tags?

Hi Dave! I had an itch to find you after all these years. Dondi Sound Studio is still deep in my heart. Glad to see you are still in the Mass/Conn area. Karen says Hi! Please contact me. Best regards , Carl

Hi Dave. Are you still at Emerson? I would love to pop by and say hi sometime. Good to see you are dooing well. I am heading out for the summer with a band called 10 Years. Bunch of kids. Check out the single "beautifull" on youtube. Big rock show.... Anyways, thanks, as always for the direction and insight. see ya.
Mike

Howdy. Just wanted to say thanks for the (couple of years old now) Kyoko Saito session article. I’m doing a little job for Centaur Records this summer that involves piano and soprano. I’ve never encountered the concept of Blumlein as a close source for vocals prior to reading your article. I’m intrigued by it, but a little nervous. I know lots of instrumental artists track everything in stereo, including the primary instrument… yet vocals are my holy cow. I struggle with the idea of trying something other than a nice tube mic in mono. I was looking around the net for other examples of Blumlein on close vocals, but so far have come up empty. Still, it seems like the perfect way to keep a realistic image of the vocal ambience - as opposed to an in your face signal mixed with mics up in the balcony.

Are there any pitfalls to the technique (like the piano showing up hard left or right)?

Yikes!

Cite away, but please, please respect the rules of science I have posted in "Rules of Analysis" that I have posted on this site, unless you feel that those, too, may be wrong. If they are, we may all be in a lot of trouble!

Best regards,

Dave