Free Hearing Test

Found this hearing test link online. Just took it myself, so if you’d also like to take a crack at it…

Article: How To Tune Your Room

by Ethan Winer. Originally for EQ magazine

“Few project studio owners enjoy the luxury of owning a purpose-built control room. So it’s common to see people mixing in bedrooms, basements, or whatever space is available. While you can certainly get good results in almost any room if it has enough acoustic treatment, you’ll get even better results if you…”

Read full article here.

Article: Speakers of the House

A Sound Editor Surrounds Himself with Woofers and Tweeters
by Michael Hertlein, MPSE for EditorsGuild Magazine

“The last time I purchased audio speakers was about 10 years ago, and those were a “bass module” and a couple of satellites. Before that, it was when I graduated high school and I got some generic brand speakers with huge 12-inch woofers. This time around, instead of going to the store and buying the first speakers I heard, I thought I’d research what others had to say to help me narrow down the selection…”

Read full entry here.

Article: Cut and Drawn An Animated Evening of Editors

by Michael Kunkes for EditorsGuild Magazine

John McKay, the New Zealand-based sound editor [SFX Editor/Sound Mixer] who conceived of and introduced the Virtual Katy (VK) workflow solution to the marketplace, presented a seminar in June at the Guild’s Hollywood headquarters, titled “The Avid/Pro Tools Interface––A Users’ Perspective.”

Read full entry here.

Article: Recording Spaces

by Ethan Winer. Originally for EQ magazine

“For many project studio owners, calling their small recording space “a live room” is a bit of a cruel joke. Many people are lucky to have two rooms so they can record in one room while monitoring in the other. Big-ticket professional studios have very large recording spaces for a good reason – “

Read full article here.

from PRX: Sit Perfectly Still, The World Will Present Itself to You

Claes Andreasson created this piece and here’s how he wrote the history of it:

‘”Sit perfectly still…” is a (Kafka) quote from an interview I did with James Ellroy.
I thought it would fit very well for an audio excursion, or a soundscape about the Big City.
Here´s the thing: In the late 1980s I moved from Sweden to Los Angeles. To this big, mysterious city, with so many voices and sounds.
“Sit perfectly still…” is a collection of some of those voices and sounds, that I have recorded over the years. Mixed with music, and events that reminds me of the place I now live in. There is no story, no plot and no narrator. My hope is that it is a little like when you pick up a shell on the beach, put it to your ear, and you start hearing all kinds of things. ‘

I had reviewed this piece for PRX last year and I had the opportunity to get in touch with Claes. His radio pieces are eclectic and engaging; I’d blogged about his ‘The Singing Yeast Cell’ piece.

Tutorial: Capture Quicktime Files With FCP from Avid

Captured!
And Why It’s Better than Exporting QuickTime Files
by Scott Janush for Editors Guild Magazine

“This is a quick combination tutorial on how to capture QuickTime files for your sound and music departments using Final Cut Pro direct from your Avid editing system, as well as a little bit of information on watermarks and serial digital interface (SDI) video…”

Read full entry here.

Article: Acoustics- Good or Bad Vibes

by Ethan Winer. Originally for EQ Magazine

“Every EQ reader will agree that recording and mixing music is a lot of fun. And if you produce your own music, it’s even more fun to hear the ideas take shape and begin to sound like a “real” recording. But most of us encounter frustration somewhere along the way…”

Read full article here.

BBC Profile: John Barry

Part of BBC’s Artist Profiles series.

Film composer John Barry‘s career spans over 5 decades. You’ll find in this profile:

• Art of writing music for film (audio interview)
• Music excerpts from The Persuaders and The Ipcress File
• His biography, filmography and many more.

from PRX: Lost and Found Sound And Beyond

I promise you that you will thank yourself for giving this two-hour program, hosted by Francis Coppola, a chance. This is a masterful production by the Kitchen Sisters that plays like poetry woven with sounds from and about things of the past looking into the future.

An excerpt from this exceptional two-part program description reads like this:

“A sound hound himself, Francis Ford Coppola weaves these twelve richly-layered radio documentaries together with his own stories, reminiscences and home recordings, including his 1977 “interview” with five-year-old daughter Sofia Coppola about what she wants to be when she grows up. The stories include a surprising tale of Liberace and The Trinidad Tripoli Steelband, the saga of Sun Studios producer Sam Phillips, and narratives from Mohawk Indian ironworkers at the Twin Towers and Vietnamese manicurists in America.”

• Hour One
• Hour Two

About the producers:
Kitchen Sisters is comprised of producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, who have producing great radio since 1979.Founders of TheSonicMemorial Project, the Kitchen Sisters are also producers of Hidden Kitchens, a series they like to describe as having “sound-rich radio stories exploring American life and culture through food.”