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

I read a lot about your understanding of sound.

While I appreciate your efforts to get a grip on this complex issue and while your writing is elaborate and detailed I fear you may be wrong. Misguided may be the word. Just about everything you think you understand may be untrue. Thus your writings may be misinforming and doing a disservice. I'm not saying you're wrong but I strongly suspect this is the case in a number of claims you make as being factual (and supposedly based on experiential, measurable evidence).

What specifically may be wrong about your understanding, I may detail later if you're interested.

Continuing with part 2 of the message that I started the last time:

It has been said that this (center channel dialogue) is ideal, or at least good, for "talking heads". Even there, I disagree. Back in the tiny-screen TV days of the 1940's and 1950's, with the single speaker, this may have been true. Most newscasts of that era had a single newscaster, who was usually imaged centered on the screen in tight full-face shots, so that you could see their expressions on the small screens. Today, it is very different. We call the "star" newscaster an "anchor", because he heads up a team of one or more other newscasters. I say "he", because even though it is now common practice for at least one of the newscasters to be female, to this day the anchor is usually male (yes there are a few, still rare, exceptions)...

So, we have a team. Most often, there are two people on-screen at any one time. Both of their voices seem to emanate from someplace in-between them. I get the strange impression that they are both lip-syncing to some very versatile narrator hiding underneath the center of the news desk. This under-the-desk ventriloquist is very adept, as he or she is able to instantly change this mysterious center-voice back-and-forth frequently between male and female. Even in those few instances where there is only one person on-screen, widescreen composition will often position that person to one side of center. So, even there, that person's voice seems to emanate from the potted plant or furniture that happens to be center-screen at the moment.

Earlier, I referred to today's surround sound (a term I still like to use for all flavors of directional sound used today) with the parenthetical [removed]sort of). Yes, it does surround. But not always from the same place the picture would indicate it should be.

Back in the 1950's, several "simulcasts" were made with a kludged-together "stereo" audio system. A television station would broadcast the picture and one sound track, of perhaps, a classical music concert, while their sister FM outlet would broadcast the other audio track. This worked. Sometimes. However, it was common practice then, as it is now, to switch back-and-forth between the audience POV and the musician's POV. Nevertheless, the sound orientation remained the same. This discrepancy made it appear that the first violins had suddenly jumped from the left to the right side of the stage, with absolutely no agreement between the picture and the sound. This jarring visual-and-aural disagreement continues even in the (rare) concert telecasts today. Although, today, with all of our modern digital advancements, it is likely that the sound and the picture will occasionally go out of sync as well. At least the old-tyme simulcasts were always in perfect sync. So much for progress.

Sincerely,

John A. Rupkalvis

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Mr. Moulton ~

Your article in the March 5 issue of TV Technology, was, as usual, excellent. The facts stated were right on.

That said, I should point out that I never have liked the concept of center channel audio for dialog. To me, most often it is very unnatural.

By way of explanation, a (reasonably) brief history of directed sound may be helpful.

The first widespread use of synchronous sound was the motion picture (at least it usually was very well synchronized way back then, as compared to some television sound now). Very early it was recognized that a single sound source for all of the sounds accompanying a picture was not natural. So, most theaters in the 1930's and 1940's, especially the larger ones, attempted to disperse the sound from the single track through an array of loudspeakers placed at a variety of locations behind the screen, that was perforated for that purpose.

Television receivers in the late 1940's had very small screens, 8 inch, 10 inch, and sometimes 12 inch were reasonably common. Rear projection sets existed also, but even their "big screens" were only 16 inch. Most of these television receivers had a single speaker, usually located below the screen. Since the screens were so small, anything in the proximity of the picture produced believable sound.

By the early 1950's, CRTs grew to 16", 17", and even a (reasonably rare at that time) 19". So, projection TV in the home disappeared for several decades. But the sound still emanated from that single speaker.

The movie industry, regarding the growing television population (as well as slightly larger TV screens) as a threat, tried several things to combat this encroachment. 3-D and widescreen became popular at that time. But, widescreen processes presented a problem. Sounds that accompanied the images did not seem right if they did not sound like they were coming from the visual source.

The answer was what was then called "stereophonic sound", a term later applied to dual channel home sound systems. But, in the movies it was more than just two channels. Even CinemaScope boasted four discrete audio channels, and Todd-AO had six, while Cinerama had seven. True surround sound, although it was not called that back then. An actor walked across the screen while delivering his or her lines, and their voice appeared to be coming from wherever they happened to be at the moment. Very effective. Very realistic.

Jump ahead to today. Yes, we still have surround sound (sort of) for music and effects. But, the voices all seem to be coming from the same place, regardless of where the image indicates they should be. With the larger screens of today's "home theater" televisions, in the wider 16:9 aspect ratio, this disparity becomes very obvious. A giant step backward to the 1930's and 1940's in terms of natural sound-and-image association.

(End of part 1, due to the word-limitation. Hopefully, I will be able to finish this in part 2).

Sincerely,

John A. Rupkalvis

Dave,

Let's see. It has been 35 years since you sold me my first EML-101 at Dondisound! I'm retired from the Navy, still writing for Recording, and have just set up a media production company -- CrystaLogic Productions. It's been a while since we chatted. Send me an email address that you actually read:)

John Rossi