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Binaural sounds

October 21, 2019/in academic, art, news, recording mixing mastering, sounds/by chnetwork

In recent sonic research I have been experimenting with the Hooke Verse binaural microphones.

Coupled with a portable recorder, I have been capturing some 360 sonic panoramas of the south coast coastline, weather & bush environments.

Due to wind & background noise, some of the recordings have needed a bit of RX7 Spectral De-Noise and post production in general. As a result I have recorded a Youtube video which serves as a good intro to Izotope’s RX7 De-Noiser.

Lastly, a few of my favourite immersive 360 recordings from the session can be found at my freesounds.org page. Be sure to check the file titled trying to record 360 sound in the bush with the kids. Whilst unusable for what I intended the audio for, it does demonstrate the Azimuth abilities of the microphone set up, by that I mean the variable that can position sound spatially behind the listener.

From a binaural sound recording angle, Gordan Hempton, has been a bit of an inspiration of late. You can hear some of his super high resolution Neumann KU-100 Dummy Head binaural recordings through Quiet Planet, and their Soundcloud.

On a more beats tip, I’ve been revisiting Yosi Horikawa and his use of 360 field recordings within electronic music. The below 2018 Red Bull documentary shows him busy in field-recording mode with what looks like a strange DIY four capsule mic build.

Safe travels and happy adventures in sound to you all.

Freesounds.org and some new field-recordings

September 20, 2019/in academic, art, news, recording mixing mastering, sounds/by chnetwork

If you haven’t used freesounds.org before, let me have the pleasure of introducing you.

Freesounds.org it is a massive online library of recordings categorised by subject matter. A lot of the generous field-recorders & audio engineers upload there content under the CC0 license, in other words you are free to use their recordings in any commercial, or other manner you chose, without payment, and without attribution.

I have used many of these recordings in my productions, and have finally started to give back to this community.

My first four uploaded field-recordings come from a recent work trip up to the Hawkesbury River. They consist of frog and insect night time atmosphere’s from the ponds around The Grove Studios, and further, the lapping ocean and bird songs from Dangar Island, pictures below.

All the field-recordings were created with a Tascam DR-44WL and the onboard XY mics @ 24bit 48kHz. The recordings were then cleaned up with RX Spectral De-Noiser, and normalised.

You can find my these sounds here, enjoy!

The Grove Studios

September 12, 2019/in academic, news, recording mixing mastering/by chnetwork

Recently, I visited The Grove Studios, Studio 1, to record drums for a client’s record. We stayed at the studio over two days, loved the studio, pulled some great sounds and had a great time. A big thank you to Scott, Izaac and Owen for having us.

The input list for the session is at the end of this post. Stand out signal paths from the session include; the Crunch / Crotch mic, our Gabriel Roth / Daptone, one mic technique, and the Kick Out signal.

For a crunch mic, I usually will use a Sennheiser MD441-U (left), but went with a MD421 (right) as despite The Grove’s great mic locker, they were without a 441.

The mic worked well, but the real gold within this signal chain was a Neve 1064 (Pre-amp and EQ), and DBX 162 Stereo Compressor.

The Neve 1064 has that lovely colouration that has been commented on by many, and the DBX 162 can be driven into harmonic colouration as well. All up, it was a tight, warm and coloured signal that proved very punchy within the overall drum sound.

On a similar one mic technique, we used Gabriel Roth’s one mic trick, that being a mic placed side of kick, almost under the snare. The mic chosen was a vintage Reslo ribbon, notorious for a mellow lo-fi high-end frequency content, or lack thereof. The Reslo was patched into the SSL 4000 G console to balance the mellow top end of the ribbon with the brighter SSL preamp and EQ options. Further, an 1176 Silver Face was inserted to smash the signal, apply colouration, and to compress the signal and bring forth all the drum sounds into a tight image. Again, within the drum mix, this particular mic gave us access to a punchy, lo-fi, coloured overall drum sound.

The kick-out signal was comprised of a Rodes Classic in Omni (for a larger bottom end), a blanket to help the kick have separation from the rest of the drum kit, and the Neve 1064 preamp for a coloured and thick low mid. The signal was then routed to Empirical Labs Distressor; a slow attack, quick release applied. The high pass button was engaged in the signal detector to allow the bottom end under 80Hz to not trigger the compression and result in a larger uncompressed low end.

In conclusion, what a live room and control room. Very highly recommended for any studio needs. Lovely grounds, functional kitchen, and accommodation to boot. Below are some pictures from the session and the input list.

INPUT LIST:

1. Bass DI (J48 Radial Active DI) – Quad 8 – LA 2

2. Kick in – D6 – SSL – (1176 Black Face insert)

3. Kick out – Rodes Classic – Neve 1064 – Distressor

4. Sub Kick – SSL – (1176 Black Face insert)

5. Snare up – Beyer Dynamic M201 – Telefunken V76 – Distressor

6. Snare down SM57 – SSL

7. Hi Hat – Octava MK012 – SSL

8. Rack Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

9. Rack Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

10. Floor Tom – Sennheiser MD-421 – SSL

11. OH L – Coles 4038 – SSL (C2 Smart L)

12. OH R – Coles 4038 – SSL (C2 Smart R)

13. Crunch / Crotch Mic – ? – Neve 1064 – dbx 162 L

14. Daptone (side of Kick position) – Reslo Ribbon – SSL (1176 Silver Face insert)

15. Room close – RCA DX 77 SSL – (1176 Blue Face insert)

16. Room Far – AKG C34 Stereo Condenser – Chandler TG-1 L

17. Room Far – AKG C34 Stereo Condenser – Chandler TG-1 R

18. Vocal Guide – SM7B – SSL

19. Guitar Tele DI – Neve 1064 –

20. Guitar Tele Amp – SM57 – Neve 1064 –

21. Hammond – Leslie Speaker – L – AKG C414 – (Urei 1178 L)

22. Hammond – Leslie Speaker – R – AKG C414 (Urei 1178 R)

Youtube Channel – Audio Adventures

March 20, 2019/in academic, art, recording mixing mastering, sounds, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

I’ve decide to start a nerdy Youtube Channel, Audio Adventures.

The content will vary from specific questions from my students, to techniques that I’m enjoying while producing records for both myself and others.

Thus far there is a tutorial on

How to set up sidechain with 3rd party plugins in Ableton

How to use dynamic EQ in Fab Filter’s Pro Q3

How to use Max for Live’s LFO Audio Effect

Introducing the CHORG CHAOSS PAD

October 4, 2018/in academic, art, recording mixing mastering, sounds, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

As part of my masters, I was challenged to build an audio processing application in MAX.

The result is a bastardised version of Korg’s Chaoss Pad, titled Chorg Chaoss Pad (Mac users only sorry).

Below is a video that will hopefully inspire and demonstrate some of the Apps functionality. Basically, it is an XY control pad controlling parameters of a delay, overdrive, band pass filter and a reverb.

The delay still has some zipper noise, but I quite like the lo fi artifacts. Excuse the Camtasia water mark, as the App is fairly basic I couldn’t route to Soundflower or equivalent and use the usual screen recording apps. Further, this is only my first build in MAX, but hopefully you will create some amazing sounds with it. Please let me know if indeed you do.

Download here

As the App is not Apple Certified you will need to tweak Security conditions in your System Preferences to allow the dmg to be opened / install.

Happy CHORGing

Non-Urban Decay VR collaboration

July 2, 2018/in academic, art, sounds/by chnetwork

Recently I had the pleasure to collaborate on a VR installation entitled, Non-Urban Decay, for the New Tricks group exhibition at Tortuga Studios, St Peters.

Grace Kingston, used photogrammetry techniques to create assets in Agisoft Photoscan and created, with assistance from Games Academic (SAE) Geoff Hill, a VR environment in Unity. The environment was then sonically realised by myself, giving a range of audio assets to Unity wizard Geoff Hill, to express the progression from natural environment into a decaying digital environment.

Below are a few images from the exhibition.

360 Project for Masters

May 7, 2018/in academic, art, recording mixing mastering, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

As part of my masters, in particular a module entitled, AUD456 – Immersive Audio, I have been studying the world of 360 content, with a focus on spatialising audio within a 360 field. Please wear headphones when viewing the above to experience the 360 Audio.

For the major work, a group of musicians and non-musicians alike were invited into SAE Studios for an Sunday afternoon improvisation. The work is titled, Men’s Circle, and features a group of men in a circular format, playing a range of provided instruments.

The instruments included; an acoustic guitar, various bells, a singing bowl, a bamboo flute, a melodic wood box, a pre-prepared Push control surface populated with field recordings, vinyl crackle and percussive one-shots, amplified via a small guitar amp, a contact microphone connected to a mini Orange amp, den-den daiko drums, and a rain stick. The participants were encouraged to choose an instrument that they felt comfortable with and change after each improvisation to another instrument.

The improvisation was captured via an InstaPro 360 Camera. Both visuals and audio were captured on the device, however, the Ambisonics microphone had some issues and glitches were present in the file. Fortunately, coupled with the in-camera Ambisonics microphone, was 4 small diaphragm condensers, Sennheiser 8040 x 2, Rodes NT55 x 2, plus 3 dynamic microphones that were used to capture a vocal performance (Shure SM58) and close mic the two amplifiers (SM57).

These microphone inputs were phase balanced and recorded to Pro Tools. The mono signals from the close micing were then spatialised using the free FB360 Workstation plugins with the DAW Reaper.

As the sounds were close mic’d, Ambi Verb HD from Noise Makers was also used to emulate a sense of the space and at points to embellish instruments such as the flute and voice with a large reverb.

To embellish the work and in order to see how Reaper and the FB 360 workstation handled Ambisonic files, some 2^nd Order Ambisonic files were created using Sound Particles. The files are of an ambient nature and are only very subtly mixed in toward the end of the improvisation. The agenda was to not detract from the improvisation.

Hoped that you enjoy the improvisation and it’s presentation in both 360 Audio and Vision.