Panels complete

The existing panels have now had their infill replaced with a more dense 50mm Rockwool and also the two other ceiling ones have now been completed. The acoustic is much more dead now and stereo imaging has greatly been improved when monitoring via the Blue Sky monitors - it is quite amazing how much difference there is.

With some fabric left over and a couple of slabs of Rockwool, I might look into making a pad to go on the back of one of the doors between the studio space and utility room next door. Even with a double stud / double leaf fire door arrangement, noise from the tumble dryer is still audible. It's not a problem, but I might as well use up the left over materials!

One other thing to improve upon is the glass in the vocal booth. I plan to take out the sealed unit and replace it with two separate panes of 4mm and 6mm respectively.

Acoustic Panels - update

Not quite as much progress as I would have liked, but 3 out of the 5 panels were completed this weekend. The panel standing upright is for the ceiling; the two final panels for the ceiling will be completed this week. As can be seen from the third photograph, Glass Wool was used instead of Rockwool simply because the supplier sent me the wrong material! I think I may change the infill to Rockwool as its performance should be better than standard Glass Wool batts. More pictures to follow...

Back on with the Text Book

Have now decided to try and crack on with the Text Book. Focal Press were approached in May of this year and they seemed keen so I have now drawn up a proper proposal and emailed it to them today. Hopefully they will be interested in the idea which is essentially to create a text book which is half theory and half practical, backed up by a dozen or so exercises on a provided DVD. The book is going to be primarily aimed at Media / TV and Film students who often have very little experience in the way of audio production and post production. However, there will also be some more advanced topics which should appear to the more experienced too. My proposed topics include:

• Introduction to soundwaves, signals and metering systems.
• dB theory.
• Studio installation and wiring (to include examples of both audio and video editing setups).
• Location recording: field mixers, field recorders, line up, microphones, synchronisation, cabling and interfacing to both camera and field recorder.
• Specifications: what they mean and how they are measured.
• Digital Audio Theory, including HD.
• Overview of MIDI.
• Dynamics Processors.
• EQ.
• Effects.
• Case study: conversion of a single garage into 5.1 post production studio.
• General introduction and overview of ProTools (and possibly Logic Pro and Apple's Soundtrack too).
• Routing within ProTools.
• Sound for Picture exercise (workflow: capturing Video into Final Cut Pro / Premiere, using ProTools for line up of tracks, editing, encoding video ready for picture edit, exporting audio back out of the NLE after picture edit, back into ProTools for soundtrack mix).
• Listening exercise: demonstration of different microphones used at different distances and recorded to different devices (to DV camera, solid state recorder, via a Field Mixer etc.).
• ADR exercise within ProTools.
• 5.1 in ProTools – in TDM and LE systems.
• Basic mastering.
• DVD Authoring for Audio exercise: stereo, creating and encoding 5.1, adding director’s commentary, PCM and AC3 encoding, basic bit budgeting, DVD scripting.

More on this as and when I hear back.....