Mr. Moulton Golden Ears is exactly what Ive been needing!! This is going to help me in the areas where I was weak. My ears. I'll keep you posted on my progress. Still haven't gotten Total Recording, but I will.

Hi Mike!

It's nice to hear from you, see that you're doing well. Thanks for the kind thoughts. Stop in if you're ever back in Boston metro.

Best,

Dave

Hey Dave, Love the new site, Good to see you are still keeping us on our toes. I was a student of yours at Emerson back in the 90's. You gave me alot of inspiration for which I thank you very much. I am and have been on the road with various touring bands for quite some time now. Toured the world with everyone from Dickey(louder than god) Betts, to Al (nice and acoustic) DiMeiola.
I hope you are well and thank you for everything,
Cheers, Mike

I have thought about it, even tried it. Never been able to make it work, for me or the student. I'm open to suggestions, however.

Thank you Mr. Moulton, Golden Ears is on it's way. I ordered from Parsons. Great price also. Total Recording is next. I am very excited about receiving the drills. I wish I lived in your area to take more courses. Ever thought about correspondence?

Great website!! What's the biggest difference between the Golden Ears & Playback Platinum lectures. I want to purchase a program but am torn. Would both be beneficial? I'm thinking about Total Recording also. Help. I want to learn as much as possible from you and your systems.

I'm sorry you are having this problem.

I think you can correct it pretty easily and quickly by simply "regrooving" or re-calibrating your hearing - go back to some fairly early drills, do them with both headphone sets and memorize the new sounds as well as the old ones. It should come to you fairly quickly.

You have the added advantage, once you've done this, of knowing how the spectrum soundw over both a good and a bad system. Hopefully, you'll be able to carry that in memory and use it for fun and profit!

Good luck, and thanks for writing.

Best,

Dave Moulton

For a long time I use golden ears with a very cheap set of headphones. Recently I bought a very expensive famous headphone set but guess what I can not identify the frequencies anymore. You see is not the same anymore the frequencies sound totally different to me.
Plus I am doing a course called Critical listening through Berklee and when I have to guess which frequencies are I am doing all of the drills wrong.
Should I keep my old cheap and almost dead headphone or I learn to hear bad with the wrong way and now I must learn in a new way?
Do you know that this cheap headphone is the only one who can reproduce 31Hz and 16 KHz? I learn how the frequencies are with this one or I didn’t? huh?

Hi All..

I did a google search on a Shure HTS100se encoder and it brought me here. Does anyone have any info on this neat piece of equipment?

Thanks and MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!

Kevin in PA.

Dave,

You've got a great website that's full of very very informative and entertaining. A great contribution to musicians...

Rick Landers
Modern Guitars Magazine

Hi Dave!
I was looking up some info on grounding issues, which of course brought up Neil Muncy's name (how could it not?), and then your site. I'm a long way from Fredonia right now - teaching in Kosovo. I had fun reading through your site - keep up the good work. Reminiscent of a coversation we had so long ago - of all the web sites I have looked at, I can honestly say yours is the most recent.

Mr. Moulton,

I am currently reading your book Total Recording (page 117 and going) and i am learning a lot ! I've started a list of questions (so far two) and when i'm finished with the book i would like to e-mail them to you. Is there an e-mail address i can send it to?

I was doing an early saturday morning web crawl and found the following quotation- "Why is American beer served cold? So you can distinguish it from urine."
--David Moulton
I followed by googling the name and found myself here at the lab and was happy to find the plethora of interesting information here, as I do a bit of video production. I think we met breifly at SUNY Fredonia. Anyhow Thanks for having this site and provideing the keen resources to helping the world to be a better sounding place.
Randy Crawford- suny fredonia '81

As a long time BBN and independent acoustical consultant I appreciate your talent for making acoustic concepts understandable to a wide audience. But your recent article on managing SPL in TV Technology has left me a bit uneasy.

You state that in setting up a listening configuration one should set the individual speaker levels for pink noise at 0 VU or -14 dB FS signals to be 85 dBC. Should one turn on all the speakers at one time the SPL could go up anywhere from 8 to 16 dBC, depending on the phase coherence of the speaker signals. That would make it mighty loud.

Listening to music or home theater at these levels could be unpleasant. To be a sound editor or mixer at these levels might lead to hearing damage. SMPTE recommends movie theaters be set up for 85 dBA and Jay Rose recommends mixing at 91 dBC levels (85 dBC @ -20 dBFS).

What do you feel is the proper SPL for mixing and for listening.

Amen to your thoughts and beliefs on the "loudness race". I record, produce, mix and master mainly hip-hop but other genres as well and the squashed, limited dynamic range recordings are simply becoming tragic. Hopefully with enough persistence and individuals like yourself and Bob Katz enough people will be educated to scale it back a bit. Thanks for the great articles.

1 Independent Canadian Label in your corner to help try and end the loudness race.

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