Harman International - Digital Signal Processing Engineer

A Career Study

Kirk Bushen

Wed 26 Oct 11
7:30pm
Durgin 209

Kirk has worked for the likes of Crown International, Lexicon, and - currently - Harman International, primarily as a Digital Signal Processing Engineer. Like most of you, he started out with an undergrad degree in SRT (his from the prestigious SUNY Fredonia program), He will be talking about his career path, how he got started and progressed, what kinds of skills have been important to his success, and what the industry is currently looking for in new hires.

This is a great opportunity for you to discover potential career paths in the industry and oalk to an experienced engineer about how best to take advantage of your academic experience and transition into the professional world.

Shure Microphone Listening Lab Live!

Gino Sigismondi

Wed 11 Oct 11
7:00pm
Durgin 213 & 114

A good recording starts with a good sound source, and no single element of the audio signal path is as important in capturing that source as the microphone. Join Shure representatives for a hands-on listening lab. By experimenting in the studio with a live band and a broad range of recording microphones, you will learn hands-on which micropohones work well on various sound sources.

Feel free to stick around and ask questions or chat with the Shure micropohone specialists. Light refreshments will be served.

Audio for TV Sports Broadcast

Rick Smith

Wed 20 Oct 10
8:00pm
Durgin 209

DESCRIPTION

Audio for television sports is an in-demand specialized branch of the sound recording industry. TV Sports audio personnel are constantly striving to provide the viewer with the highest qualty sound from a live sporting event. Most positions require the engineer to be able to build mixes in mono, stereo, and surround on a variety of digital consoles, working fast, overcoming all obstacles, keeping the air from ever falling silent. Rick Smith will be here to discuss the equipment, signal path, miking challenges, and sonic considerations faced by television engineers.

ABOUT RICK:
Rick Smith has been freelancing in the television audio industry for almost twenty years. He has worked for ABC, NBC, FOX, TNN, and ESPN at every major sports venue in New England and many others around the country. Rick has engineered for unique events like ballroom dancing, paintball, and professional bull riding. Currently, Rick is teaching full time at the new England Institute of Art and freelancing in the TV sports Industry.

Snare Drum Production 

by Alex U. Case

04 May 10

- TUESDAY, May 4, 6:30PM, at O'Leary 222, University of Massachusetts/Lowell (directions below)


DESCRIPTION

Perhaps no other instrument in rock and roll offers the recording engineer so much opportunity—for success or failure. With a range of sonic capabilities from whispering brushes to cannon fire, the snare drum challenges us to know our SRT craft. The snare demands careful and constant attention, from our ears and our gear.

Join Alex Case for our last Colloquium of the year, as he distills the challenge: from musical acoustics to psychoacoustics, from microphone techniques to mixing strategies.

 
Overcome the chaos of your next basics session, reduce the stress of your upcoming live gig, and take maximum advantage of all the tools available to you at final mixdown.

HEAR TOMORROW
The Hearing Conservation Workshop

special guest: Benj Kanters
Associate Professor & Associate Chair
Audio Arts & Acoustics
Director, Audio Design & Production
Columbia College Chicago

DESCRIPTION

The “Hear Tomorrow” workshop is a new approach to the promotion of hearing conservation. This program is specifically targeted to both professionals and students in music and audio engineering. Experience has shown that the principles governing hearing physiology are easily understood by those who study and practice audio and music. Moreover, this group is quick to understand the importance of developing their own safe listening habits, as well as being concerned for the hearing health of their clients and the public who pay to listen to recorded music, go to concerts and dance clubs, and enjoy home theater systems.

The workshop is a 2- to 3-hour presentation, in three “units”: hearing physiology, noise-induced loss, and conservation strategies. The first unit focuses on hearing physiology from the outer ear through hair cell transduction, focusing on those functions that will provide a basis for understanding the mechanics of hearing loss. The second unit explains hearing loss, including explanations of the effect on timboral, pitch and dynamic response of hearing. The third unit on conservation then looks at understanding exposure limits and hearing protection methodologies, including calibrated, custom-molded earplugs and in-ear monitor systems.

Colloquium: The World In Between Analogue and Digital 

by Fadi Hayek

02 Mar 10

- TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 6:30PM, at O'Leary 222, University of Massachusetts/Lowell (directions below)

- The event is free of charge, and open to all students, faculty and public. The Sound Recording Technology program especially invites students and faculty from other institutions, as well as recording professionals and enthusiasts from the surrounding region.


DESCRIPTION

For most of us the world of our DAW encompasses our audio universe. Over time as professional audio engineers and producers we come to realize that there is a world beyond the box. That world includes a myriad of virtual plugins, as well as both analogue and digital hardware. This combination comes together to form our unique and individual signature sound.

Bringing these two elements together is not a simple task and requires technologies that are developed with both workflows in mind. Please join us, along with guest speaker Fadi T. Hayek from Solid State Logic for a discussion of the history and technologies that have lead to this resurgence of Analog and Digital hardware. This will be an informative and entertaining evening where we’ll cover the world that lies between Analogue and Digital. The hybrid world...

Topics include:

Summing in the box and outside the box:
Understand the science and sound behind this controversial topic.

Transient response and SuperAnalogue:
How to get the “Big Record” sound out of my DAW.

Core Audio Pipeline and the PCIe standard:
Is zero latency possible in a Native DAW?

Hybrid Processing of Plugins:
What are the differences between native and hardware driven audio plugins

Fadi T. Hayek is an audio engineer originally from New York City. In his 20 year career has worked for several recording studios in the 90’s. From there he joined Steinberg Media Technologies where he was part of the sales team as Sales Manager in the US and was involved in product management for Nuendo and Cubase. Currently he’s the National Sales Manager for Workstation Partner Products at Solid State Logic.

Colloquium: The Art of Miking Strings 

by Tom Bates

03 Feb 10

- WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 6:30PM, in Durgin Concert Hall at the University of Massachusetts/Lowell (directions below)

- FACILITY TOUR of the university's Sound Recording Technology program starting at 5:45PM, for anyone interested

- And for anyone who can hang around after the presentation, there will be further looks (and listens) at the facility, including refreshments and an opportunity to schmooze.

- The event is free of charge, and open to all students, faculty and public. The Sound Recording Technology program especially invites students and faculty from other institutions, as well as recording professionals and enthusiasts from the surrounding region.


DESCRIPTION

Tom will be talking about miking strings, and some related subjects. He will use recorded examples. (He works on a Mac, with Logic, which he will bring for the purpose.) Part of the discussion will relate his experiences with different microphones, halls, musicians and mic placement. He will switch back and forth between recorded examples, for the listener’s evaluation.

He will talk about EQing and compressing strings so they sound more like good string recordings -- if they should need or benefit from such EQ, etc.

His examples will start with details of sessions over the years with the Moscow String Quartet. Sometimes he’ll use piano quintet material, as well. He will speak briefly about the evolution of violin mic technique over the past 100 years.

Tom has been a producer and engineer for the MSQ for about 12 years. He will show how his mic techniques have changed over the years, due to changes in performance and recording style and to the advent of the digital era. Then he will discuss recording full orchestras in traditional sonic imaging, and compare that to the techniques used in recording film scores. To illustrate, he will play examples he made recording the NY Philharmonic, and film score examples.

We will listen to a group of mics in direct comparison tests. The MSQ and Tom performed such a comparison, and agreed on a winning mic, which he will bring with him.

He will also play a melody from the opening of the Borodin String Quartet, played standing in the same position with the same bow, but performed once with a Stradivarius violin and once with a Guarneri de Jesu violin. We can judge how much difference there is between them.

He will briefly talk about methods of doubling and tripling string sections in a session, and of adding synth string pads to live instruments. He’ll also address the issue, and play an example, of recording strings for use in contemporary settings.

Then he will take questions from the audience. We have also encouraged him to play a track or two from his most recent recording of ancient Mantras with modern orchestrations (including strings). We'll see if there is time and interest in that.

Composing, Syncing and Recording Film Music: What You As The Engineer Need to Know (And Do)  

by Peter Rothbart

20 Nov 09

Music for film is a topic widely talked about by UMass Lowell students. Many of them, especially so for SRT students, plan on going into audio for video as a career. Around campus, people were very excited to have Dr. Peter Rothbart, the Professor of Music and Director of Electroacoustic Music Studies at Ithaca College School of Music and audio-for-video composer and engineer, come and talk about this popular topic.

The majority of Dr. Rothbart's talk dealt with music as a dramatic element. As an example, he played four versions of the title sequence from Hill Street Blues. In each version, different music accompanied the picture, changing the mood of the show from a comedy to an action/adventure to a gritty drama and, finally, to the original, character-study that the show actually was. He was showing that by changing the music, our impression of the picture morphs to fit.

He also went into the technical side of audio for film. He played the opening of the 1992 version of the film Dracula and asked us to listen to the separation between the basses, cellos, voiceover, and fire sound effect. As a group, we then spent several minutes discussing how this was achieved and why this separation was critical to the final product.

It was a great presentation and the students who attended all seemed to have enjoyed it thoroughly. We would like to thank Dr. Rothbart for sharing his time and experience with all of us. 

- Jeremy Wegrzyn, Secretary, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

Introduction to the Microphones in the Microphone Cabinet - With the Sound On! 

12 Nov 09

The world of microphones is large, with a history stretching back to Western Electric's development of capacitor and dynamic microphones in the early 1920s. For the beginning engineer, learning which microphones work best in any given situation is a daunting challenge, but it's also one of the most important skills for anyone working in audio.

Today's meeting was intended to introduce new students to the microphones they'll start using this year - focusing on those workhorse microphones so often used on guitars. The UML AES officers put together a list of mics they've found work well in a number of situations, and put them in front of a bass cab, a guitar amp, and an acoustic guitar. On each instrument, the mics were placed as close together as possible, to avoid differences in sound quality due to differences in placement. Tracks were recorded to Pro Tools through a Delta 1010. The resulting session file, with all the tracks fully labeled, is available to any interested student for critical evaluation.

Among the microphones used were the ubiquitous Shure SM57, the gorgeous Neumann U87 (in cardioid), AKG's D112 (which, we were pleased to learn, works almost as well on guitar and bass amps as it does on kick drums), and Sennheiser's always impressive MD409 and MD421. A number of other microphones that even the AES officers were less familiar with were also used, with varying results.

UML AES hopes that this shootout spreads the officers' love of microphones to the rest of the school's students, and that it will inspire them to experiment with mic choice in their own sessions. Have a listen to these recordings before you select the microphones for your next session. 

- Bret Apitz, VP, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

That Which Must Not Be Named: Mixing in the Box Techniques 

by Connor Smith

4 Nov 09

Connor Smith, current Sound Recording Technology graduate student and all-around knowledgeable guy, gave a talk to students about mixing entirely inside of a Digital Audio Workstation. He used one of his own sessions as a demonstration and showed us how he handles mixing conceptually, without simply saying what he did where. He prefaced this demonstration by telling the students how he views in-box mixing as a three-step process:

1. Organize

2. Listen and think

3. Make it sound better

His entire talk was broken down into those three steps, starting with organization. He strongly emphasized the importance of a well-organized session for both the original engineer and anyone who may receive those sessions later down the line. It was just simple things like making sure tracks were named accurately and completely, labeling musical sections across the timeline, and grouping similar instruments together. All of them are simple things that can be easily overlooked.

For the "listen and think" segment of the talk, Connor played us a rough mix he had done of the project and asked the students to think about what should be done. He wanted to actively engage the audience in the creative process. The students were asked to listen to the lyrics and think about kinds of processing that would reflect the theme of the song. Conner joked that if the song were "about flowers and rowboats, [he] would use one approach. If it was about devils and yelling, [he] would use another." In the same vein, the ability to recognize which musical parts, arrangement-wise, were the most and least important was emphasized and the development of this skill encouraged.

During the "make it sound better" portion, Connor went into more technical detail about the techniques he uses. As examples, he talked about the proper use of auto-tune to fix minor fluctuations and the use of drum sampling to enhance drum sounds (while warning that this was a last resort measure.) Certain artistic processes were explained, such as the use of reverse reverb and distortion on vocals.

At the end of this talk, Connor opened up the floor for questions from the audience. He gave general advice on how to get a start in the business using his own experiences as examples, the importance of time management, and knowing when to be done with a mix. As a final thought for the crowd, Connor advised that the overarching concepts -- creative, technical, musical -- were more important than the actual plug-ins used or settings applied. Learn to listen and be prepared to use whatever tools are available to meet your sonic goals. 

- Jeremy Wegrzyn, Secretary, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

127th AES Convention Wrap-Up and Special Guest Tim Jobin 

14 Oct 09

After a spectacular trip full of gear, gossip, education, and inspiration, the students of the Sound Recording Technology program of the University of Massachusetts Lowell gathered together to reflect upon their trip to the 127th Audio Engineering Society convention in New York City. The meeting was geared to both reflect on the trip as well as provide insight and education to those students who were unable to attend the convention.

Seated in a group circle, the interspersed officers encouraged anyone who had gone on the trip to speak about their personal experiences, what they've learned, and what their likes and dislikes were. In a very open forum, everyone was able to ask questions and voice their opinions together. A slideshow of pictures was presented in the background of the discussion to give context to those who didn't get to experience the convention first hand. Pamphlets, papers, and swag - as well as personal notes taken at the convention - were passed around for all to see.

As an added bonus, Tim Jobin joined the meeting as our guest speaker. Tim graduated from the UMass Lowell SRT program last year and came to share his experiences at his internship at Citadel Broadcasting. He spoke about his experiences living and working in Knoxville Tennessee, working with remote location teams to help broadcast various sports events around the city. Students were able to ask questions and gain a deeper insight into their future by gaining practical knowledge from one of their peers. 

- Matt Ionnotti, Treasurer, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

SRT Facilities Revealed

by Bill Carman 

7 Oct 09

Bill Carman, Associate Director of the Sound Recording Technology facilities, introduced the underclassmen to the vast technical infrastructure of the rooms they'll be using during their time at the school. Mr. Carman knows these rooms inside and out - literally - and no one is better suited to talk about them as the facilities are his design. He started by introducing the other people who make the room work: the senior undergraduate studio supervisors, the graduate assistants, and maintenance chief Jeremy Houle, a former student of the SRT program who now helps keep everything up and running. Among the details that particularly appealed to the audio nerd in everyone present were:

- A review of the API Vision console and Studer A827 2" 24-track tape machine, both part of the fundamental SRT philosophy that learning analog signal flow is still every bit as important as learning digital.

- The school's extensive microphone collection that ranges from the humble SM57 to some of the world's best mics from AKG, Neumann, Royer, DPA, and others.

- An in-depth look at the school's senior and graduate studio, room 114, a major point of pride for the school. The room is unique in that it works equally well as a studio, as a mixing/mastering room, and as a critical listening space. Its variable acoustics and multiple interconnects make a broad array of recording sessions and research projects possible.

- The setup of the talkback/cue system allows tracking to take place in any combination of the school's 4 studios simultaneously, all controlled from a single production room.

A secondary focus of the meeting was getting underclassmen to know their upperclassmen better. Seniors were asked to seek out assistants from among the freshman and sophomore students, and everyone was urged to help out with the school's larger projects, like the installation of the recently arrived SSL 8000 GB console. 

- Brett Apitz, Vice President, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

Listening Session 

30 Sep 09

As music students, we are often asked to analyze songs when we listen to them. For many, this can get to a point where listening to music isn't even enjoyable. In an attempt to prevent this from happening, the AES officers hosted a listening session in the critical listening room at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. After about an hour of listening for pure enjoyment, a couple of the officers gave short presentations on some things they had noticed in selecting songs to play for the listening session. Vice Chair Brett Apitz began with a few examples of compression. He played "What Goes On" by the Velvet Underground. Although it seems unheard of, the guitar in this song is not crushed by a compressor, so it has a pretty wide dynamic range compared to what we are used to hearing. To contrast this, he played "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers, in which the vocals were compressed to a point where the intensity level of the singer went from a calm talking to a screaming intensity with very little perceptive change in volume.

After this, Chair Marc Hoffman played a few examples that demonstrated the dangers and rewards of sampling music as an instrument. He played "Buggin' Out" by A Tribe Called Quest. In this song, you can hear the cuts in the samples and where they begin and end. As a comparison, he played "Take Time" by the Books. In this song, the band inserts samples from various sources and they want you to hear where the sample starts and ends and where it came from. It is the same effect but implemented for two different reasons.

Next up were a couple of surround mixes. First was a song accompanied by video called "Dynamic Symmetry" by BT. This was interesting because it was an all-encompassing experience between the video on the screen and the music surrounding you. After that, "Only" by Nine Inch Nails was played in surround. While most surround music mixes tend to be a bit gimmicky, this was a very interesting and dynamic mix. There were various synthesizer noises swirling around you and pulling you into the music, but you were still engaged by the driving bass and drum tracks that Nine Inch Nails has been known to provide. All in all, the surround mixes were a great experience for those of us who don't have a properly set up surround system in our homes or listening environments.

As the night wound down and people began to leave, the remaining students moved to the centerline of the room, and the session regressed into listening to songs for pure enjoyment. "Hakuna Matata" and "The Circle of Life" both got played off of the Lion King soundtrack, which was interesting to hear the film scoring. Also, who would have known that in "The Circle of Life" that a drum set and midi piano are African instruments? One of the highlights of the night for many came toward the end, when "Creep" by Radiohead was played. After being enthused by hearing Sean Slade's talk about perfect guitar tones at the Boston Area Definitive Audio Student Summit, students were eager to hear some of his previous work. Let's just say that he definitely did not disappoint.

The listening session came to end not for a lack of material or enthusiasm, but because it was just getting too late on a school night. We all have different reasons to listen to music, but in a room that sounds as good as the critical listening room at UMass Lowell you will never run out of motivation to listen to, study, and enjoy music. 

- Marc Hoffman, President, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

Reality Is Not A Recording - Recording Is Not Reality

by Jim Anderson 

25 Sep 09

Renowned recording engineer and AES President Jim Anderson began his talk to the attending UMass Lowell Sound Recording Technology students by emphasizing that -- for him -- there are no secrets in the recording business. Anything that the students would want to know would be open to them. After all, only from the more experienced can young engineers learn the tricks of the trade or, as Mr. Anderson put it, to better "control reality."

This idea of controlling reality was the central theme of Mr. Anderson's talk. Using examples from his own career, he showed how every step in the recording process alters the original sound. The seemingly real, audiophile reproduction of a live band performance through loudspeakers is not a reflection of the sound that actually occurred in the studio at the time of the performance. The engineer must transform the sound of the band in studio into the desired sound of the band as realized on playback of the recording. Even acoustic jazz music recordings require a countless list of reality-altering engineering techniques. Among the many examples he gave, he played his recordings from the album Hubsongs, with Tim Hagans and Marcus Printup playing the songs of Freddie Hubbard. Mr. Anderson said that he had wanted to recreate the sound of Blue Note records in the 1960s. He went through some of the steps he took to create that sound, such as recording to two-inch 16-track tape without the use of noise reduction.

Near the end of his talk, Mr. Anderson gave the students a piece of advice about their future careers, that their place in the music process wasn't just to record. Their place is to "influence the overall artistic impact via the specific use of technology."

Lastly, he made a convincing case for why he is a member of AES and encouraged all students to join. He then took questions from the audience. 

- Jeremy Wegrzyn, Secretary, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

Students Attending the AES 127th in New York 

16 Sep 09

The new student officers of UML AES were tasked with a sales pitch for their first meeting of the semester. The product: attending the 127th AES Convention in New York.

The hour long presentation was structured to provide information, entice the uncertain, and generally get everyone excited for the weekend of October 9 - 12. Attendees were walked through the processes of booking hotels, registering for the convention, choosing events suitable for an audio student, and networking properly and intelligently. Wonderful pieces of advice offered by convention veterans included dealing with high food prices, seeking cheaper lodging across the river from the Javits Center in New Jersey, an internet hospitality phenomenon known as "couch surfing," and the importance of budgeting time to see as many interesting presentations as possible.

Understanding the financial strain of 4 days and 3 nights in New York on college students, the officers aimed to ease the pain by arranging car pools and suggesting contact with New York-dwelling UML alumni who might be willing to offer up their couch or floor to a student in need. They also gathered information that they could take to the school's Student Government to beg for extra funding that could be put toward the trip. To try to inspire those uncertain about attending, the glorious Events calendar was displayed, and attention was directed to those events that seemed the most interesting to a student, such as Kevin Killen's presentation on mixing in the box, the Bob Ludwig moderated panel on mastering and the art of the album, and the thread of Game Audio presentations new to the convention.

The 30 students who attended the meeting left knowing all they needed to know about the convention, and were hopefully, at the very least, considering the options available to get them to New York. The officers left looking forward to another few weeks of getting everyone in the Sound Recording Technology program excited about what's sure to be a great weekend. 

- Bret Apitz, Vice President, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell

Listening to Live Music and Listening to Loudspeakers - the Challenge for SRT Students

by William Moylan 

9 Sep 09

"Engage music."

Dr. William Moylan repeated this phrase throughout the first half of his lecture, with nearly all of the sound recording technology students present. He was encouraging students to never miss an opportunity to listen, hear, and learn. While it is natural to listen critically to recordings we care about, and it is essential to listen carefully during recording sessions, students of audio should view every live concert and every student recital as an opportunity to develop their listening skills.

Only through the active engagement of sound could engineers-in-training understand the characteristics of that sound. Moylan explained that "sometimes you're there to be a photo-journalist, sometimes you're an abstract or surrealistic painter." He meant that, in an engineer's career, situations will arise where the recordist's actions must be transparent to the music, while other situations invite the engineer to make a major artistic impact. The role of the photographer is to make a clear, accurate report of the sounds that occurred. The role of the painter is to create their own art through the recording process, to leave their own mark on a piece of music. The greater experience a student of audio has listening to a variety of sounds, the more readily they can play either role.

The second half of Dr. Moylan's presentation was a critical comparison of the newly remastered Beatles' albums. He played portions of the songs "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Here Comes the Sun", "Eleanor Rigby", and "She's Leaving Home." This portion was more a group discussion than a lecture. Rather than simply telling us all the sonic differences between the two versions of each song, Dr. Moylan let students and faculty in attendance describe what they heard. He would acknowledge each comment and expand upon it, clarifying what was expressed and bringing certain aspects to attention that may have been missed. This was a very good introduction to critical listening to the students who have not yet taken the course on that subject, and a good reminder of the importance of practicing the skills for those who had. 

- Jeremy Wegrzyn, Secretary, AES, Sound Recording Technology, UMass Lowell