Category Archives: Sound design

Favourite sound of the week #7

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As I promised before, here’s this week’s favourite sound of the week, which is a poor old Digi002’s fader pack in its last days of existence.

I’ve recorded this last year without any serious purpose. One morning when I switched on the unit, I heard these strange, very interesting sounds and I couldn’t help but record them. The files were backed up and only a few days ago I found them, listened to them and again, immediately fell in love with the weird, mechanical, rhythmic clickety-clack.

I managed to “force” the unit to make these sounds again by using its own utility menu in standalone mode, testing the faders with step fader and with vegas mode. As it really was an old unit I had to make multiple takes as sometimes it didn’t want to even move the motorised faders. Finally, before the unit died, I was able to record the faders.

The first part is the step fader mode with obnoxious noise from the unit, which is good for us. The second part is the “vegas” mode when the faders supposed to move like a snake. The nice mechanical clickety-clack accompanied by the not so usual noise of the motors. The third part is while the poor faders are acting-up, struggling with the necessary movements.

Without the intent to restrict your imagination, these sounds are good for many mechanical, electrical, industrial effects. Mangle these as many ways as you would like to, pitch them up or down or both, cut, use only the noise part of it, etc. Have fun with them!

Lack of sounds and time

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In the past few months longer posts and field recordings are missing from the blog as many of you mentioned in the emails. Yes, it’s true, let me explain this a bit.

As you might know that from january I relocated to Budapest as I accepted a job offer there. I thought it was going to be quite busy at the start but frankly I underestimated the magnitude of it. Literally from day one I happen to fall from one predub/final mix into another, so I really didn’t have time for anything. I tried to keep the pace of at least one post per week but not always succeeded with this aim. I’m still in the process of catching up with the frantic world around me, but the good news is that it seems to getting better now. Or at least with the help of some focused planning it seems that I will be able to handle my schedule better.

Due to this busyness I terribly neglected a few things, such as:

  • my contribution at the Sound Collectors Club
  • my contribution on some forums
  • reading good articles/blog posts
  • go out and record sounds
  • write blog posts

But now I found place for my little trusty Sony D50 in my backpack, so from now on it will accompany me to almost everywhere and if I encounter some fascinating sounds, and will be fast enough to grab the recorder, I’ll record it and just as it was the practice in the past, will share it with you.

Regarding the usual mini series like the “favourite sound of the week” will be continued shortly and I try to make some clever plan to eschew these huge downtimes. And as always I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions about the blog. Thank you for all the readers and followers.

Worth to listen and read

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Just a little heads up about a few very good sources.

First for a little reading, anyone who even thinking about making or organising a sound library should read these articles. I read them and actually saved them as they are so useful! Written by the excellent field recordist and blogger/writer Paul Virostek:

My second weekend suggestion is the latest Tonebenders podcast with Michael Raphael being the guest. You can learn about MS, dual-MS, XY and ORTF techniques, listen to examples and hear some opinions about the usage of those. Really valuable information not only if you’re plan to record in these formats, but even some very good tips and opinions about using the recordings in surround, stereo and mono.

Status update

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Sorry for the long pause, but I had so much things to do I really didn’t have any free time in the last few weeks. Now I’m officially a post production engineer at MUPA at Budapest.

As this is a huge organisation with lots happening behind the curtains I thought I would write a little bit about what we do here, and maybe more importantly about the workflows and gear we use there. The picture above is the big concert hall, which is amongst the best 20 concert halls in the world.

New job, new adventures

First let’s see my role. As post prod. engineer I have to record concerts, mix and master them. Record, sound design, pre-mix and mix tv and radio shows, promos and occasionally films. We have a bit odd, but fully functional archive and obviously we need to take care of that too. My first week was almost full of learning the different rules in the house. I don’t want to bore you with more details, I guess everyone knows what’s happening in a huge building where you daily meet live gigs, theatrical plays, film shoots, etc. Versatility is the key here.

Technical background

We have four studios here, some exchangeable, some serves a few limited purposes. The whole complex is wired through madi optical and gigabit network so virtually I can reach any workstation from everywhere. Live broadcast or recording can happen in three studios. For this purpose we have Studer Vistas (for live mix) with a bunch of outboard gear like: TC system 6000, Lexicon 960, Tubetech multiband comps, SPL eqs, SSL bus comps, etc.

The DAW side is more varied. In every room, we have Nuendo, Pyramix, Pro Tools. This is essential for compatibility and versatility. Every DAW has its own dedicated workstation with around 900 gigabytes of storage. It may sounds big, but due to the vast amount of work, actually we almost always run out of space.

Because of this, every recorded material goes to the Sound Storage, which is huge raid connected to our gigabit network and it is around a few petabytes (constantly growing). After that it’s your own choice if you would like to work from the network raid or copy back the data to a workstation and start your job there.

This freedom has some inherent danger. If you’re not check everything, you can easily ruin your colleagues work. For example if someone is recording in studio one, and you start to copy huge amount of your data through the network, the recording machine will likely to crash or stop recording. For this purpose we have very strict rules and every room has a mandatory checklist you must follow in order to not cause any trouble around you.

After this quick update I will post some workflows, I hope it will be interesting for you, and very soon I plan to continue all the series posts: the favourite sound of the week, shortcuts for our pleasure, etc. In the meantime, don’t forget that we have one of the best vocation in the world.

Merry Christmas

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First of all I want to thank you all for the support and suggestions. I really truly appreciate it.

A few words about the future

I’ve got many plans. All the little series will continue to go on in the new year and I also plan to post even more sound design related articles and techniques and hopefully much more interesting free sounds as well. Regardless of Avid’s attitude I still love and use Pro Tools every day, so the tips won’t stop coming.

Of course if you have any idea/suggestion/criticism, feel free to tell me.

Few days ago I wrote this on twitter:

It seems that a big change is ahead of me…

Now the big change is here. I officially resigned from my position at the Hungarian National Theatre at Szeged and accepted a job offer at the Palace of Arts at Budapest as a post production engineer. Exiting times!

I had been working at the theatre for more than 14 years so this is inevitably a huge change for me, but I’m really looking forward to work on the upcoming projects. As now I have enormous amount of things to sort out, probably this is the last post for this year, although I’ll try to do at least a quick tip if possible.

And the most important thing is:

I wish everyone of my reader and and every sound obsessed person in the world a Merry Christmas and a really Happy New Year!

Stay tuned, I’ll do my best to post interesting things here!