Hi Dave,
I have a 17-year-old nephew who plays keyboards, "written" music, arranges the pieces he's written, then records and mixes his own CDs. He's talented, and has great passion for all this having started producing his pieces at age eight. He's decided he would like to be an audio engineer (I'm also suggesting he think along the lines of performer and producer too).

I was wondering what products of yours I might buy for him for Christmas, which also is his 18th birthday. Does Golden Ears sound right for him? (pun intended.)

Also, he's considering going to the New England Art Institute to pursue an associate's in audio engineering. I want him to learn more than toggles and switches though . . . I want him to get new ideas about arrangements and how to present them . . . your sculpture approach to sound. I don't know why, but I suspect the NEAI teaches the tech end of audio engineering, but perhaps not the art. My nephew is beyond that. He's got a lot of the tech down . . . it's using engineering tools judiciously, with a more mature vision and sensibilities that he needs. Are there programs in the Boston area that you'd recommend over the New England Art Institute? The only thing that might keep him back is that his ability to read music is limited. He does most everything my ear and memory, which in his case seems to be pretty remarkable.

Please advise me regarding what products of yours might benefit my nephew Tom. Thank you David for your time and consideration regarding my query. P.S. Your website really looks wonderful. I will definitely pass your website address on to Tom and suggest he read your articles. Thanks so much for helping people really appreciate and take full pleasure in our wonderful sense of hearing. Best always, Barbara Benham

Hi Dave -

I am just writing to suggest that you post the table of contents of the Total Recording book somewhere. I am interested in the book but would like to see the contents. Amazon has got me quite used to this and it really makes buying online much easier!

Done! Thanks for the suggestion. -webguy

Dear Dave,

I was so pleasantly surprised to run across your website when I was searching for some lost memories of my youth and I googled dondisound studios.

It is wonderful to see that you're still invoved in spreading your audio technology knowledge around. You were a tremendous influence in my life. I am no longer involved in audio as I followed a more mundane path to making a living.

I (quite joyously) attended the Center for Audio Studies Certificate Program in DondiSound Studios before you left to teach at the actual SUNY Fredonia campus.

I still talk about ear training to my co-workers every time I hear a Steely Dan song on the radio. I still remember driving around with your sound level meter measuring the db (SPL) level in a moving car. Both with windows open and windows closed. And, most of all, the concept of signal flow helps me in every area of my life. You were truly a great influence, even though my journey strayed off the recording engineer path.

Thanks for everything. Best wishes to you and your family.

Ken Harrison (Certified Audio Technician)
Center for Audio Studies Class of '79 -

Hi Dave , firstly I'd just like to thank you for producing the Golden Ears set of cd's , they're really helping my mixing and overall audio appreciation! I've just got one specific question that's driving me mad. In volume 4 drill set 6 (Pentimento) , the answers seem strange - I'm doing pretty well , but then come to this one and it all seems out.. I don't want you to think that I'm a bad workman blaming his tools (or you) , but I'd just like to clarify it.. Many thanks.

Unfortunately, Signs of Life is no longer with us! I've had quite a few requests for the CD, but so far as I know it is completely sold out, and nobody from the band seems to be around any more.

Sorry about that.

Best,

Dave

Hello,

I am a student at the sae institute in Leipzig. In the course of "golden ears" I came across the album "signs of life" of the homonymous band. As I really do love their music, I am know trying to find out where I can buy the cd. Do you have any idea where I can get the album??

Best regards

Florian

Hi my name is Scott and I am a sound tech at my high school. I just got through the first 2 disks of golden ears and found them very helpful as a starting point to finally add some depth to my mixing for live events.
The reason I am writing this is because I am doing a 10 minute presentation on noise-induced hearing loss and wanted to do a demonstration to show people if they might have lost hearing in either frequencies or in loudness(like different frequency tones I don't think that they would be very interested in pink noise). Also I want to show them what it could sound like if they have lost hearing at a older age. The whole point of my presentation is to persuade my class to turn down the volume of their iPods.
So I was wondering if there were any audio files out there that I could do this with sort of like what is on the multimedia section of this website. If there is anything that someone can do to help me out with this presentation I would be eternally grateful (If Dave could help me out it would make my day ) But I am open to anyones help. Thanks for reading this! If you want to contact me please write at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

In response to Henry Ruhweidel's post, below:

Henry is referring to an article I just wrote for TV Technology, wherein I suggested that a reasonable standard for the magnitude of resolution in ALL dimensions for HDTV/Surround Sound might be 60 dB, and I characterized that as equivalent to the pressure ratio of 1,000:1, not 1,000,000:1, as Henry asserts (correctly, if incompletely).

Henry correctly notes that the equation for voltage ratio (which is a pressure ratio) is 20xlog(pressure ratio), which is the square root of the power ratio, which is, for 60 dB, 1,000:1, which is the square root of 1,000,000:1.

I decided to skip this explanation in the article because I only have 1,000 words to play with for any given column. Hence the confusion.

Henry has gone far more deeply into the visual resolution issues than I had any inention of doing. So far as I can tell (I don't know much about video), his assertions all seem to be correct.

I stand by my position that the ratio of line resolution is reasonably equivalent to a pressure ratio. Furher, the article was REALLY making the point that in order to have a high resolution experience, we need to be able to SUSTAIN that experience for the 'high-resolution" period of time, or 99.9% of the time.

WHEN we have HD running, we manage to maintain 60 dB in both visual and audio realms pretty consistently. The problem is that we can't do it for very long. I suspect our time errors in video production, as perceived by the end-viewer, reduce the resolution to somewhere between 1 and 3% (30-40 dB), which isn't very good, and in many respects wrecks the HD experience we've been promised.

Thanks, Henry, for your thoughts!

Best regards,

Dave Moulton

Uh pardon me, but 60 dB is not 1000, its 1 MILLION. 1 folllowed by 6 zeros. That number in video has been achieved since days of hte Quad high band VTR. Actually the AVR 1 would hit 63-64 dB becuase of the square wave zero crossing mod/demod system. Now if you are talking voltage, its 20 log, not 10 log which is power. Digital stuff today is easily inthe 70 + dB range of V/N ratio.

Now if we are talking MPEG errors, that has little to do with dB except in RF land is BER rate that kills it, or concantination errors, or conversion dither error, etc. Yeah, the compression engines stink.

The viewing public also equates contrast ratio with "high detal" and this is limited to the display device, CRT, LCD, Plasma, whatever. I guarantee you can walk up to any solid state display (non CRT) and count the dots. On RT you may be able to count the lines if the spot diameter is less than the scan line spacing but you can dither that so force overlap between fields. (fuzzy logic has nothing over a little V jitter from a HV yoke circuit!)

While the screen may be 103" diagionally, at 16:9, its hardly more than 1/2 height to width which goes back to the square pixel vs the other geometric shapes pixel. All of which is limited by the consumers 20/20 or not vision and viewing distance, amient light, etc.

Dave,
Thanks for posting the information about hearing loss and prevention, and OSHA safety levels. I have recently had a small incident at "The Bunker" at Bose, and have sustained some hearing damage (not sure if it is permanent just yet). The dB SPL was slightly over 137 dB SPL, and I used over ear protection and Earplugs. It's been over a week and my ears are still ringing. I now know that even with 2 levels of hearing protection that transmission through the skull, and other orifices such as nostrils can cause hearing loss on some people. Even outside this room with 1 level of hearing protection on was still not sufficient when the doors opened. (How I got injured). You may have just saved my career by posting this article, and my hearing. Thanks so much!!
Andy Despres

Hi Dave,

Well, moved my studio from Los Angeles to Kingston, Jamaica 4 years ago. We dont do too much fancy stereo M/S techniques here, but i'm having a ball living in the Caribbean and running a Reggae label.

Love the site, came up in a search, so hats off to the "webguy" he's got your site's search engine hacks looking good!

How many more ex-patriot engineers are out there??

Were producing a series of concerts here in the Caribbean, 3 more this year and 6 in 2008, lotsa fun, kinda branched out from sitting behing the console, into broadcast and digital distribution....

Thanks for the knowledge in those precious Fredonia years....

-rick o'neil

Hi Dave,
Once again, a totally killer site with unlimited information! I'm still looking for two engineers who went missing in action in the early eighties: Mr. Dave McNair outta Texas and Mr. Claude Hachile from NY, NY. C'mon guys, time to phone home! Thanks again for for truly maintaining the bar of excellence!
Very respectfully,
J. D Eisenberg

Great site! With it I can return to school!

Hi Dave,

I am so happy I found your website.
I am doing a lot of studio work lately , and I find all this information priceles.

Thank you for sharing.

Geni

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you enjoy the site. I had a ball preparing the material!

Best regards,

Dave

Fantastic web site and products Dave. I've learned a lot from them and I thank you for sharing your knowledge.

This is a great website, Dave. It's rich with content and well organized. I'm impressed! And, indeed, your Grammy tale was a classic.

Thanks,

Karen

You're very welcome. I had fun developing all this material, and am very pleased when people find it useful and illuminating.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Dave

Hi Dave, just wanted to say thanks for the great information and insight on here.

Hi Dave,

It's been a long time -- since my Berklee graduation in 1991.

I work in location film/tv sound. A cable network's in-house audio post supervisor confused me recently and I have a two-part question.

I often deliver stereo wild sound for 5.1 mixes sourced from MS stereo mics (Senn MKH 30/40 or 50 and Neumann RSM 191). I have learned my lesson sending unmatrixed MS to American television audio people. The vast majority either never want or know to matrix it. So I deliver it matrixed; like tv dinners, just heat and serve.

This particular engineer insisted he doesn't want MS stereo, he wants XY. I told him the MS is matrixed into XY. He said right, XY, no MS. I said it is MS, but matrixed into XY. He says no, only XY. Blah blah blah.....

I ask if he means a coincident pair of cardioids instead of a mid/side configuration? He says yes, but sounds unsure.

OK. My questions.

Is it proper language to refer to matrixed MS as XY?

Aren't matrixed MS and coincident pairs, under controlled conditions, electrically equivalent?

Finally, I've heard from more than one post engineer that MS doesn't work well in 5.1, especially in LS/RS. Apparently it sounds mono to many ears in the rear speakers.

Here's where I overthink it. I have, on more than one occasion, walked in to post and heard my unmatrixed MS being played as LF/RF. They didn't like how it sounded, but used it. I couldn't convince them to matrix it. One of the two clients has not used me since (in the UK, tv engineers know how to matrix MS). Since this, I always deliver matrixed MS, except to BBC.

Is it possible that some engineers used unmatrixed MS mistakenly as XY in rear speakers and, rightfully, thought it sounded like crap? Or is there a legitimate complaint with the psychoacoustics of matrixed MS in rear speakers?

I have a few terrabytes of MS stereo wildlife recordings. It represents a decade of recording in endangered habitats across 3 dozen countries. Is this stuff near worthless? Is MS out of style in the world of dedicated 6-channel audio where mono-compatibility will never again see the light of day?

Mono-compatibility seems a very low priority nowadays. I now tell post-supervisors that MS offers the ability to sum the matrixed signals to mono and get a clean mid-mic on-axis mono effect. I sell MS as one-stop shopping for all your effects, (minus the dearth of low-frequency material for the point-one channel).

TV post people love clean little tidbits they can throw around in the LF/RF-LS/RS soundstage. If a great blue turaco squawks in front of me (an oddly common thing in my life), post production can sum the matrixed MS to mono and eliminate all the extra ambience of crickets, tree frogs and blowing leaves provided by the figure-eight. The few tv engineers that understand MS, like its flexibility.

But most tv engineers seem baffled by the nuts and bolts of MS. Am I not using terminology correctly with them? Can you offer some insights?

Cheers