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articles, etc.
Are loudspeakers musical instruments? — a thread with Yves Feder, David Moulton, Curt Wittig, and Mark Parsons
Better Living Through Software Synthesis, an Expo slide show by Michael Bierylo (link being repaired)
Bit by Bit: 'Totally Awesome!' by David Moulton
Choosing and Using DAWs: an outline by the Parsons staff
Computer Hell: Hazards on the Audio Cyberspace Frontier by Mark Parsons
Discussion: Keeping Up with Technology, moderated by Paul Lehrman, from an Expo
Double M-S: A Brief History and Its Basic Implementation by Curt Wittig
For the Children, a poem on the toil and promise that technology brings, by Gary Snyder
How to prepare for a mastering session, an Expo slide presentation by Dr. Toby Mountain
Interview: An Evening with Bob Ludwig, at an Expo
The Loudspeaker As Musical Instrument, an Expo presentation by David Moulton
So Ya Wanna Learn About Audio: A Reformed But Unrepentant Teacher Tells All by David Moulton
What do we mean by audibility?, an Expo slide presentation by David Moulton
For other slide shows by David Moulton, click here.
The authors:
Michael Bierylo is a long-time MIDI master. He teaches synthesis at the Berklee College of Music, owns Virtual Planet studio, and performs and records with the band Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.
Yves Feder is a recording engineer whose work was heard and much appreciated at Parsons Audio's Expo98. His facility, Tiny Radio Theatre, is in Connecticut.
Paul Lehrman, moderator of Keeping Up With Technology, is a well-known author, teacher, musician, impresario, and columnist for MIX Magazine. He recently masterminded a world premiere of George Antheil's Ballet Mechanique.
Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering & DVD (Portland, Maine) is the world's most renowned mastering engineer. He has mastered thousands of recordings by leading pop, rock, jazz, classical, and other artists. Dozens of his projects have won Grammy awards.
David Moulton is an accomplished teacher, author, loudspeaker designer, composer, and acoustic designer. He created the Golden Ears CD series. His Moulton Labs Web site is full of informative articles and more. With Curt Wittig (see below) he was a 2000 Grammy co-nominee for Best Engineering: Classical.
Dr. Toby Mountain is owner and principal engineer of Northeastern Digital, a mastering facility in Southborough, Mass. He has written numerous articles for professional audio magazines and journals.
Mark Parsons is founder and owner of Parsons Audio.
Gary Snyder is the famed poet. For the Children is from his seminal book, Turtle Island.
Curt Wittig is a veteran recording engineer who for some years has been on the forefront of surround recording. In 2000 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engneering: Classical for his surround recording of George Crumb's Voices of Ancient Children.
newsletters
We send out newsletters every month or so — rarely more often. They announce product news, coming events, useful Web links, special deals, new postings to our Web site, etc.
events
Our big event every year is our EXPO (see below). But we sponsor many other events too:
- We do workstation and loudspeaker demos every day, by appointment.
- A number of times every year Digidesign, Tascam, Yamaha, SADiE, Nuendo, and other manufacturers put on seminars, product presentations, and user group meetings here.
- Now and then we take a product "road show" to Connecticut, to bring manufacturers' specialists (and our own) to our many customers in that state and Western Massachusetts.
If you would like to be notified of our events, simply subscribe to our e-mailings.
Elsewhere, a number of fine trade organizations meet regularly nearby. They include AES/Boston (there are also AES chapters at U. Mass./Lowell and Berklee), SBE/Boston and SBE/CT, SMPTE, the Boston Audio Society, and informal lunch gatherings by the Boston area's radio engineers.
the annual EXPO
Parsons Audio has staged its day-long conference/exposition every year since 1991. It is held in November, usually the week of Veterans Day. For details about the latest Expo, click here.
To receive an invitation, join our e-mail list: Expo invitation.
As a number of the customer remarks in what they say about us suggest, our EXPO provides a fine day of professional development for audio professionals — a one-day intensive seminar. In the downstairs hall, a dozen or so key manufacturers display and discuss their goods. In the upstairs hall we put on a variety of discussions and presentations by skilled audio engineers and producers. All of this is highly informative and educational. Beyond that, the EXPOs turn out to offer a great — and almost unique — opportunity for schmoozing, networking, and otherwise meeting up with one's peers. 'Most anyone who works with audio for a living is likely to benefit from the event, and to get into the habit of attending year after year.
other instruction
David Moulton's Golden Ears CD series, lecture series (on CD), and new textbook add up to an excellent education in professional audio. We also offer Cool Breeze's CD's, and a how-to paperbook book about Pro Tools that is endorsed by Digidesign. Find them all at Parsons Audio.
Golden Ears CDs
Golden Ears is David Moulton's widely used audio ear-training course for recording engineers, producers and musicians. We keep them in stock. The series consists of eight CDs, in four volumes:
Vol. 1: Frequencies
Trains you to recognize boosts and cuts in all ten octaves of the frequency spectrum. Progressive drills build from simple boosts in music to more demanding single octave cuts in pink noise.
Vol. 2: Effects & Processing
31 possible signal processing changes, grouped into simple families: amplitude change, gross and subtle distortion, slow and fast release compression, equalization changes, stereophony anomalies and time-delay /reverberation settings.
Vol. 3: Delays and Decays
Delay settings from tenths of a millisecond to whole seconds; panning / slap / spaciousness effects -- in mono and stereo, on sustained and transient sounds. Reverb parameters -- predelays, decay times, etc. Invaluable when creating programs
Vol. 4: Master frequencies
Advanced EQ. Identify cuts and boosts to within a third of an octave; and two octave bands simultaneously boosted and/or cut.
They will teach you:
- to recognize the effect of compression on a variety of different signals, and to identify fast and slow compressor release times
- to hear musically relevant equalization problems
- to recognize when loudness is the only difference between two signals
- to distinguish ranges of 1 -- 10% and 10 -- 30% Total Harmonic Distortion in musical examples
- to recognize anomalies in the stereo image (reverse image, mono summation, polarity reversal, pseudo-stereo etc.)
- to identify channel-to-channel time differences over the 1 - 50ms range
- to recognize gated and ungated reverb
- and more, including 1/3 octave changes and double octave cuts and boosts.
ENDORSEMENTS
"...the music business is about sound, and anything that can help you capture and manipulate better sounds merits a look. After repeated listenings, I was actually able to discern which octaves were being cut or boosted in the frequency drills... after getting over my terrible score, I realized that the ability to identify small nuances in signal processing can help fine-tune a good mix, or even save a tough one... The more you listen, the better you become."
-- Electronic Musician Magazine
"The AES Student Section at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts is excited to provide the Golden Ears eartraining Program to its members as a great complement to their real world education."
-- Jacques Boulanger,
Full Sail 1995
"...Golden Ears has given me the confidence to tackle some of the most exciting and demanding projects... [Golden Ears] provided me with an understanding of the audio post and sweetening needs... to work on the sound design for the world's largest Omnimax theater... after working at the eartraining course, mixing, synth programming and sound design just became second nature. I will request that it be a required text for all students."
-- David Musial,
Music Technology Department,
New York University
You can buy these CDs from us. The 8 CD set plus manual costs $220 plus freight. We usually have them in stock.
David Moulton's Playback Platinum Audio Lecture Series, on CD
These CD's cost about $40 each. As Dave describes them:
"These are short little audio presentations on CD. I made them with my studio partners Scott Loiselle and Mike Breault, under the trade name "The Audio Funny Farm." They are intended to give you an intense but quick audio introduction to a range of audio topics, including loudness, compression, distortion, stereo, reverb, eq, and digital audio. There are also a bunch of listening tests that I'm sure you can use as the basis for any number of cool parlor games.
"Four CDs, with three lectures on each CD. Focused on how things SOUND. Quick. Painless, except for my seventh-grade guy humor. Reasonably fun, or so they told me at my competency hearing!
Volume 1: Loudness, Compression, Distortion
In volume 1, Dave Moulton explains how loudness, compression and distortion can vastly affect your recordings. Through these lectures you'll learn how to keep safe levels, tighten up a mix, and more.
Volume 2: Stereo Miking, Stereo Mixing, Reverb
In volume 2, learn the way stereo works and how to make it work for your miking and mixing -- what's between Left and Right, how phantom images occur, how room situations work, and more.
Volume 3: Equalization, Parts 1, 2 & 3
In volume 3, get to know the many types of equalization, learn what techniques contribute to successful mixes, and more.
Volume 4: Digital Audio: Sensory Listening Tests .
ENDORSEMENTS
"Moulton teaches the things that matter -- you can hear what's important, why it is important, and how it will improve your own work."
-- Paul Jamieson, owner, Firedog Productions
"Dave Moulton has that rare gift -- he can explain complex issues and make them fun to learn."
-- Alex Case, audio engineer and author of Recording's Nuts & Bolts educational series
Total Recording, a new textbook by David Moulton
Total Recording is the complete and comprehensive guide to audio production, and to engineering musical recordings in all genres. Written by Grammy-nominated recording engineer/composer/author/industry consultant/researcher/guru Dave Moulton, it's the product of over three decades worth of professional experience. Along with its companion CD of audio examples, this thoroughly current package is chock-full of in-depth information for professionals and students alike about the entire recording process. It is approximately 500 pages long, with 300 graphics. Price, including the CD, is $89. It is in stock at Parsons Audio.
The contents include:
• Studio and control room design for project studios to commercial facilities
• Microphone selection and set-up
• Recording techniques
• Equipment and how to use it effectively: mics, amps, compressors, gates, equalizers, signal processors, speakers, etc. -both hardware and software
• Audio software
• Surround sound
• Using MIDI musically
• Mixing boards
• Studio acoustics and psychoacoustics
• Practical electronics for engineers and musicians
• Mixing techniques
• Studio procedures
• A new approach to acoustics
• Analog and digital audio
...and many more unique and extremely interesting perspectives, including sections on hearing damage, the microphone as an ear, stereo and surround sound, psychoacoustics, and a wide variety of recording production techniques. An excellent and thorough resource that you will find yourself turning to repeatedly, 'Total Recording' is a must-have reference for every serious recording musician, engineer, and producer.
In Dave's words:
"The book has five sections, which can roughly be described as follows:
•About Recording Studios and Making Music
(or: what are we doing here?)
•About Acoustics, Psychoacoustics and Audio
(or: what is sound, etc.?)
• Audio Hardware and Systems
(or: what is a microphone, etc.?)
•About Studio Operations
(or: how do I make a really cool recording?)
•About the Profession
(or: how I do make a living at making really
cool recordings?)
"Along with doing audio, I've been teaching audio for 30 years now! Excited by the rather startling success of Golden Ears, KIQ asked me to write a book about audio (which, I confess, I'd already started, sort of).
"So I did. About a quarter of the way into it, I caught word fever and became a writing fool! What was planned to be about 250 pages wound up as 900 in the first draft! Crikey! Wotta motormouth! (Is this the lecture from hell, or what?) I don't think I'll ever do that again.
"Anyway, we edited the thing down to about 500 pages, with 300 illustrations and a CD. What does it cover? Everything I personally can think of about audio except synthesizers. I tried for some real depth and some real historical perspective. Also, the presentation grows out of my teaching experience, and really focuses on some key areas where students get confused (such as decibels). As a result, I think you'll find it a little more useful than most texts, as well as a little more personal and idiosyncratic.
"Recently I read the book through backwards (I couldn't stand to read it forwards again!) and was surprised at how good it was. Wow! (Damn, I'm good!) I highly recommend it if you're curious about audio. And just so you know, it reads quite well backwards (Start with Part V and work your way forward). It may even be better that way!"
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Copyright 2009, Parsons Audio. We welcome your questions, comments, and contributions >>> Webmaster@paudio.com.
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