Just as a well-crafted thriller kicks up a gear when apparently unrelated threads converge, the collapse of UK music and media retailer HMV seems to have greater significance than ‘just’ the failure of another high-street shop in an economic crisis.
It feels designed. As if an unseen hand has pushed Nipper – presciently posed on His Masters’ Coffin – into the front line against the sinister forces behind the music download. And that a big reveal is just around the corner.
Putting a new spin on the early work of Cecil Sharp and ethnomusicologists such as Alan Lomax and David Lewiston who have followed, Sabine Kämper has released Chorus and Cuisine – adding a unique culinary angle to the mission of documenting and preserving endangered music.
But she is not alone in her mission, or in taking on the technical challenges of remote field recording…
The recent UK Reproduced Sound conference invested heavily in acoustic modelling and auralisation. Among the event’s speakers, conference chair Paul Malpas looked at ‘the role of auralisation in interdisciplinary design’, questioning the neglect of sound in the early development stages of buildings. Good man.
On the surface, it wasn’t an issue that should have needed raising at an acoustics conference. But if not here, then where?
There’s a big problem with the Big Bang. A Big Audio Problem.
The background noise thrown up by the current rush of theories – p-branes, inflation, a bubble universe, multiple Big Bangs and their like – has drowned out the impossibility of a bang of any kind occurring where no gasses or fluids yet exist.
But then, you can’t believe everything you hear about sound…
In the beginning was the word, and the word was analogue. Analogue shone on the world of sound recording, and it was good.
For a long time, good people made good music with analogue, and looked no further for their needs. But then a shadow fell across the face of the music makers. The shadow was cast by a new force called digital. It broke analogue’s spell, and the world was remade...
The attitude to audio taken by TV advertisers and gamers could not be more contrasting, more telling – or more damning.
While advertisers eagerly lay claim to the term ‘creative’, their antagonistic stance on loudness betrays a small-minded regard for sound and its applications. Gamers, on the other hand, appear to be getting the most out of audio on all fronts. And that includes loudness…
I could almost hear the gentle shuffle of feet and slow intake of breath while courage was gathered. A long pause. Then the news. A fellow audio journalist and good friend has been told that he needs hearing aids. It's a confession...
Another silence. It is an awkward moment at both ends of the phone. Although we are the press, we do audio. We love audio. The unspoken question, then – is it all over for him?
There’s something offensive about TV ads. They run roughshod over our viewing and undermine the work of the many people it takes to make a feature film or television feature.
They do not extend the respectful invitation of print ads, designed to succeed on merit and message, but force themselves on us like party gatecrashers. They were the first terrorists of the advertising world…
Apart from the mayhem a powerful electromagnetic pulse would visit on our technologically dependent civilisation, there’s growing concern that EMPs are an imminent threat to recorded music.
Our magnetic audio recordings would be among the certain casualties, along with many other aspects of our technology. But, strangely, sound may provide us with our best line of defence.
A fearsome sound ripped through the busy street, turning the head of every passer-by. Earthquake? Explosion? Apocalypse? Actually, it was the sound of a small boy in a big red Ferrari 499.
Ten years old and with his foot stretched to reach the throttle, it was an unexpected thrill. An almighty noise and an indelible memory. But by the time he is old enough for his own supercar, it may sound very different.
The EMP accompanying a nuclear strike would mark the end of any magnetically recorded music within its reach – tape, disk or solid-state. If it targeted the traditional centres of music recording, it could wipe the recording industry’s archive of multitrack and master tapes clean. Welcome to the real No Music Day.
Termed ‘radioflash’ in British nuclear tests of the 1950s, an Electromagnetic Pulse is an archivist's nightmare. But it's not the only thing that costs them sleep...
It began with a Facebook post made by a well-known (and well liked) US sound engineer/tech/commentator – the vocal feed from a Britney Spears concert originally posted on YouTube with the strap line, ‘what she REALLY sounds like!’
The vocal was everything you knew it would be. And everything you knew it wouldn’t – no further comment needed. But it did prompt a debate that’s worth exploring.
There is something fitting about the way the glamour and magic of Hollywood is being disturbed by some dark goings-on in commercial cinema.
Like parallel storylines in a well-crafted movie, these contrasting themes are perfectly poised to converge and collide – with surprising results. I won't give the end away, but I can take you through the cast and their causes. I promise you won't be disappointed...
‘Old films were made to work with old media. Today’s film directors have too much confidence in the supposed compatibility between mixing rooms.’ Bold and uncompromising, this is a real challenge facing sound in the movie business.
It comes from seasoned studio designer and accomplished acoustician Philip Newell, who believes cinema design is locked in the 1970s and is no longer fit for purpose...
Before I discovered the secret world of the recording studio, it was the mystery and promise of early commercial synthesisers that occupied the less engaging moments of my education.
That was in the day when you could build a synthesiser on a kitchen table – something with not inconsiderable appeal. And before ICs ruined everything. Now those days are poised to make a comeback...
My first look at audio’s use of tablet computers was derailed by news of Steve Jobs’ death. My second has been derailed by word that the subject is to be ably addressed by Pro Sound News Europe… no point covering the same ground.
But there’s plenty to talk about beyond apps that make an iPad an essential piece of kit for live sound or broadcast. The combined ability of the internet and tablets is causing problems…