I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but there’s no BTP this week.
Sorry gang.
But hang in there… there’s exciting times ahead.
And I’m sure I don’t need to spell THAT out for ya!

This week, the final episode in the series on “constructing your own promo”… the mixing stage.

sl075.mp3 [ 33:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, Shelton discusses noise reduction with regard to long (time) exposures in the digital realm,
Bruce’s latest EBay purchase,
and Gary Hegenbart sent me a great e-mail about shooting in Yosemite National Park. (Thanks mate!)

si096.mp3 [ 36:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just a short message to let you know what’s going on in my life.

gen002.mp3 [ 3:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week, a discussion on Bruce’s lifestyle shoot,
Shelton talks about his upcoming weekend speaking engagement at the APSCON(vention),
and discusses “the art of seeing”.

Photographers mentioned in this episode:
Freeman Patterson
Pete Turner

Also, we’ve had a whole bunch of submissions this week for the landscape competition, which is great!
Keep ‘em coming, folks.
You can e-mail them directly to Bruce at studio@audio2u.com

si095.mp3 [ 33:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just a reminder that there will be no BTP this week.
School goes back tomorrow though, so it should be all systems go for next week.

This week, I read an absolutely amazing thread on prosoundweb about digital levels.
Some of the ideas fly a little bit in the face of some of the things I’ve suggested in the past (particularly with regard to tracking as hot as possible).
Having now finished reading it (I was still half way through it at the time I recorded this episode), the main gist of what was being discussed (and there were some pretty big industry heavyweights in there) was that if you are tracking in 24 bit, there is no need to aim for the hottest possible level to disc. These guys were advocating tracking with average levels around -20dBFS (and peaks around -12dBFS)! Now, if anyone had tried to sell me on that idea a week ago, I probably would have held on to my existing position and disagreed.
But no, the theory makes a whole lot of sense.
In a nutshell, the idea is this:
At 24 bit resolution, we’ve got 144dB of S/N ratio to play with (or you could refer to it as dynamic range if you wanted to).
NOTHING (Shall I repeat that? NOTHING) that you are going to record into your DAW has that kind of dynamic range.
Nothin’, zip, nada, nil.
For podcasters, the widest dynamic you’re likely to deal with will be your own voice, and even if you’re REALLY inconsistent with levels (and don’t own an outboard compressor), the most you’ll have to contend with might be in the vicinity of 50dB (from the quietest passage to the loudest passage)…. but even that is unlikely.
So, if you track with peaks at -12dB, AND you happen to have a soft passage 50dB below that (-62dBFS), you’ve still got 82dB of S/N below ya!
But why would you need to track that low?
Well, the theory (and according to these heavyweights who are tracking and mixing this way, the practise) suggests that if you track too close to full scale, you might introduce clipping when you start running plugins (EQ, compressors, peak limiters, whatever) that don’t operate at higher bitrates.

Look, it’s not a thread for the faint hearted, but if you have an interest in getting the best possible quality out of your digital audio setup, it’s worth the time and effort.
It took me 4 days to get through it because I kept on re-reading lines and paragraphs to make sure I understood it.
Also, the real meat starts about 7 pages in when Paul Frindle weighs in on the discussion.

OK, enough of that.

This week in the podcast, part 4 in the series on constructing your own promo: some tips on track laying.

sl074.mp3 [ 23:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week,
Shelton’s weekend away to Ocean Grove,

Shelton talks about “getting your eyes back”,
Shooting with postprocessing in mind,
and managing your portfolio.

Also, don’t forget to send your submissions for the next listener assignment (landscapes) in to Bruce.

si094.mp3 [ 37:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So, there I was, catching up on my morning round of tech blogs, when I cam across this great article on Ars Technica about how MP3 encoding works.

Having now read the article, even I have learned some more about how the prcoess works.

It makes interesting reading (if you’re into this kind of thing), and will only take you about 15 minutes (there’s 4 pages to the article).

Interestingly, the Nyquist Theorem actually dates from work done by Harry Nyquist way way back in 1928 (the Ars article says ’27, the Wikipedia article says ’28)…. certainly a lot earlier than I had previously thought.

Anyway, thought I’d share this with you in the absence of a Sine Language for this week.

Cheers,

Bruce.

Hi all,
Last night, I posted those 2 entries (for BTP and SI), and I expected WordPress to release them at designated times, but for some reason, it chose not to.
So, this morning, I had to force them manually.
Just thought I’d let you know why they didn’t appear when they should have.
Cheers,
Bruce.

This week,

Q+A 0:26
Some follow up from Patrique Osborne on pitch shifting.

KBSCOTW 4:14
ctrl+shft+v – mix paste

WITE 12:01
Delay/multitap delay

INTERFACE 16:54
File info palette

btp109.mp3 [ 27:21 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

… that Shelton was away this week, so there will be no SI this week.
Cheers,
Bruce.

Man, I love this community!

I have had no end of offers of help in the last couple of days. I’d like to say “Thank you very much” to everyone who wrote to me. Your offers are all greatly appreciated.

But I would also like to let everyone know that if you are about to send me an e-mail offering your skills, it’s ok now. Don’t bother. I still appreciate the thought, don’t get me wrong, but it gets to be tiresome writing private replies to everyone!

In the less-than-articulate words of a famous Australian boxer, “Loveyasall!”

OK peoples, someone out there MUST know something about CSS/WordPress themes.
If that’s you, I’m keen to hear from you.
There are some things I’d like to do with audio2u.com (and the related domains) that are just beyond my understanding of CSS. You’ll probably laugh when you hear how simple it is!
I have a limited budget for some development work, so if you think you can help, please drop me an e-mail at studio@audio2u.com

As you were…