This week, a ton of e-mail to answer from the last month or so,
including some reminiscing about the transition from analogue to digital within the radio industry through the late ’80′s and early ’90′s,
Ron Eastwood tried recording quasi-binaural on a boom box,
Jim Addie sent in a link to an interesting article on the merits, or lack thereof, of recording at higher sample rates and longer wordlengths (when I recorded this episode, I commented that I hadn’t read the entire article. I now have, and have the feeling that at some point in the past, I’ve been pointed to it, and have actually read it. Still, it was good to read it again!),
Greg Andreson (who is all “Bruced” out) wrote to tell me about his Zooms (the H2 and the H4!) and how much he likes them, and to comment on the wildly different standards of audio production that exist within the podcaster community,
and Pascal asked about sidechain compression.
One free VST plugin that I know of which does sidechain compression is Sidekick.
And finally, a bit of a chat about what is in store for episode 100.

sl098.mp3 [ 42:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hold on to your hats, people…
In episode 92, a listener (who wishes to remain anonymous) commented on the possibility of hearing damage inflicted by driving with the windows down, and the possibility of same being caused from riding your pushbike in busy traffic. The earplugs he’s using while riding are these.
Of course, my regular listeners know that I love my Sennheiser CX300′s… damn, I oughtta be on commission!
And that led to a discussion of noise-isolating vs noise-cancelling earbuds and headphones.
All of which led me to speculate on telephone handsets and whether or not they do us more harm than good.

Then, Jim Wesihorn checked in with news of a new pdf from the good folks at Izotope (makers of the VST/DirectX Ozone mastering plugin).
Seems they’ve turned out a whopping great 75 page document on audio restoration.
Going to have to check that out some time soon!
Thanks Jim!

Then, Steve Mayfield sent me a link about a dummy head binaural mic for your video camera!
Crazy looking thing.
One would hope it works well given the price tag!

Another long time listener who wishes to remain anonymous wrote to assure me that no, there is no distorion in my podcasts!
Phew! What a relief!
I didn’t think there was, mind you.

He also went on to provide some interesting real-world feedback on sample rate conversion.

Then, Matt sent me this screen shot of the Pro Tools manual where apparently, even Digidesign doesn’t know the difference between “bit rate” and “bit resolution”.
Why do I feel like I’m fighting an up hill battle here?

Then, Luke asked about vocal training.
I suggested googling some of these words:
‘voice’, ‘vocal’, ‘coach’, ‘training’, ‘tuition’, ‘diction’, ‘eloqution’, plus your local area
or check your local phone book.

Next, E. Bernhard Warg sent me an mp3 of a shoot out between a Coles 4104 ribbon lip mic and a standard lav mic, with regard to ambient noise suppression.

Then, Jim Addie sent in some great information on how the Red Book standard was established.

And finally, there were some listener comments on audio2u about my disaster last week.

sl092.mp3 [ 33:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, Bruce McKinnon at the dogbox reminded me that I had previously mentioned that a good future topic for SL would be a discussion of stereo miking techniques.
So, being rather light on for experience in the area (read : none), I figured the best course of action was to get Steve G (from the Audiomastersforum ) on the BatPhone.
Steve explains the most common stereo miking techniques, their pros and cons, and various applications.

Links:

The wiki article on stereo miking techniques

The Jurg Jecklin disc

sl077.mp3 [ 28:47 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Bill Wilson from the winefornewbies podcast wrote to comment on binaural recordings and to relate an experience he had with the technology.

After a request from David K., some advice on cleaning up digitized vinyl recordings.

Plus, I received an e-mail from Rob Alter enquiring about backmasking…. is it real, or merely coincidental? The ensuing discussion reminded me of the episode of Twin Peaks entitled “The Red Room”.

By the way, not sure if I mentioned it on the podcast or not, but Sine Languge now has its own domain name.
sinelanguagepodcast

By bookmarking this link, you will be able to load a version of the audio2u.com site and only see posts that are categorised as “Sine Language”.

sl063.mp3 [ 22:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download