Who can wear the "sound designer" title?

This is an age old debate, and it's not specific to our industry - but a recent question on Social Sound Design by Jay Jennings kind of re-spawned the debate.  "What makes you think you're a sound designer?"  or as it's implied, "what have you done that gives you the right to take that title within the industry?"

In lieu of just answering in short form there I felt like I'd take the opportunity to go more in-depth with my own perspective.

Initially, my thought is that discussions about titles are discussions about language.  The fundamental questions behind the question is: what are you trying to communicate with your title, and to whom, and for what purpose?

To preface this: in my opinion the title of "sound designer" has kind of devolved into a similar place as the title of "graphic designer" or really any adjective + "designer" 

The best of the best take those titles, and a whole legion of hacks take those titles as well.  Its why reels and credits have become so important.

Just because someone designed something doesn't make that person a designer, but the fact will remain that the person did design that one thing.  If that person designs lots of things, at some point that person will move across the broad grey area that separates novices from masters.  Many people will take the title of designer after the first thing they designed though, not after they've truly created their first masterpiece.

All this dilution reduces the level of meaning that the title itself holds.  There are no pre-qualifications or trade guilds that police who gets to use the title of "sound designer" and who cannot.  This is not a title like "doctor" - or even "nurse" for that matter.  There are no standards, there is no board that can strip you of your title, and just printing the title on your business card or email sig or resume won't get you very far.

So with that said, my perception of the basic skillet a quality sound designer would have includes things like:

• field recording - including mic technique, signal flow, monitoring, etc
• data management and metadata fundamentals
• sync sound editorial
• creative manipulation of sounds with eq, compression, delays and distortion
• creativity in manipulating dynamic range
• creative use of synthesis
• a developed personal aesthetic
• the ability to communicate and defend creative decisions
• the ability to accomodate the creative vision of others

It's a tall list, and none of the things on it are easy or could be learned entirely in a year.

Of course not everyone that prints "sound designer" on their card can do all of those things well, and some of the things that really bring a person to the next level of sound design are not on that list.

I'll also note here, that generally titles can be pretty confining. They set up boundaries that imply both things that we do and things that we don't do.   My current business card implies zero about my ability to produce and edit copy, shoot video and timelapses, program websites, do public speaking, etc.

It also only peripherally implies things about my ability to cast, record and edit voices, mix for broadcast, and other more directly audio related things.

Its assumed that the titles we give use to describe ourselves are shorthand, but it's also assumed that it's shorthand for the most important thing that we do within the context of our jobs. 
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So with that in mind lets get back to the underlying language questions about the title, and what my opinion of the answers should be.

First off: what am I trying to communicate with a title?

Going back to the "doctor" comparison, in the US, the title of M.D. means that you spent years in an accredited college attaining your bachelor's degree, and in school you learned anatomy, biology, chemistry, and other fundamentals of medicine.  You then went to med school and spent even more years learning the craft.  Once you've performed to the standards set by those institutions, you then enter into a medical residency program where you essentially act as an apprentice under other practicing and experienced doctors.  Once that process is complete you've applied for and acquired a license to practice in your state. All of this is implied with the M.D. title and the purpose of this title is to communicate these qualifications to the world in a standardized and uniform way.

I think that in the case of "sound designer" I'm not really trying to communicate a very specific skillset, and I'm certainly not going to be able to communicate any specific level of experience. 
I think that all I can realistically hope to communicate to a stranger with the title of "sound designer" is that I work in audio, that I do some sound editorial, and that I think that I'm being creative when I work.  To assume any more than that from the title would lead one to some misjudgements about people pretty quickly given how many people do take up the title these days.


Secondly: to whom am I communicating?

Generally speaking, professionals of any kind are utilizing their titles to communicate with everyone they come into contact in a professional context.  This includes clients and prospective clients, peers, vendors, management, etc. 

Given the wide array of people that I'm communicating with here, I really just have to try and lay a basic groundwork with the limited number of words I have available to use in a title.  My email sig and business card are not the place to get into a detailed analysis of what I can and can not do.

Thirdly: why am I trying to communicate this with my title?

Medical doctors utilize their titles to shorthand all of the credentials listed in the previous question.  This leads their clients to give them a baseline assumption of credibility that they can diagnose and cure many physical illnesses that they may be approached with.  The standardization of the titles in the medical profession has gone a long way towards improving the art and science of medicine.

Sound is not nearly as noble or dangerous a profession, and as such those types of standards aren't really as in demand.  The question of why designers of any kind utilize titles at all is kind of interesting. 

In my case, I use my title in context with my coworkers.  I'm generally the sound design guy, another guy is the lead composer, the boss does mixing and biz dev, and the new guy is still in the process of defining his niche within that dynamic.  This is not to say that I'm the only one that can do sound design in the shop (I'm not) nor is it to say that I can't do things like mixing and biz dev (I can). 

I think it also gives another level of insight into what I can do when I'm working with clients outside of the context of design.  If all I've done for this client is cut voices and they grab my card where it says "sound designer," they may think of me when its time to make cool noises near the end of the project.

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In the end, we're not defined by the titles we assume because titles are confining.  They're a shorthand, a means to an end, and we use them despite the fact that we're always learning new things, doing different things, and evloving our perspectives.

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for more thoughts on this, check out the second half of ep 56 on lets make mistakes, where  Mike and Katy struggle with the same issue in the web design world.  I don't think they came to any real conclusions there, but if nothing else it shows that audio people aren't the only ones who struggle with the whole title thing.  :)

fun with dopplers

here's  a quickie tutorial I just did with regards to how I use the Waves doppler plugin to make bys out of steady onboard vehicle recordings.  In this case I used the onboards that I recorded of my motorcycle a few weeks back.

Structurally, the concept draws heavily from Charles Deenan's 100 whooshes in 2 minutes tutorial on designingsound.org

The main change I made to his process was to really work the ins and outs of each by using the faders.
 
Some things I didn't really discuss, but you can see how they would work are the fact that you can make stylized whooshes with this technique as well.  That 100 whooshes post goes into great detail on that, though my preference is to go a little more focused than what Charles does.  For example, I'll  substitute a bunch of bow waves  and streams running, and get a bunch of underwater waves going on.  

In the vid I'm using a controller instead of a mouse to move the faders (so that I can move several simultaneously)and I'm performing the moves in real time.

skip the first 15 seconds or so.  Vimeo seems to have a pause glitch in there.



My two wishlist items for doppler would be an option to make it stop at the end of the path, and 96k support.

Neighborhood Dogs

One of my favorite things about the new collaborative way that the internet has brought us sound people together is The Sound Collector's Club.

TSCC is the creation of Michael Maroussas, and the basic premise is that all members pay a nominal fee to help with hosting the files, then each month a new theme comes out and we all go out into the world and record it, with each contributing member contributor getting instant access to the other recordings from the group.

Its an insanely cool way to beef up your library, because it has you out recording on a regular basis, and it puts you in contact with a group of great sound recordists from all over the world.

Its multiplicative recording.

So after some twitter riffing on themes a while back Michael had decided to roll with one of my favorites:Dog Barks-BGs

In my personal library I call them neighborhood dogs.

I have a moderate collection of these recordings, the first of which I made when out walking my own dog.  She's actually very good at staying quiet while others are going nuts, so for a few weeks I just went on my walk and brought my trusty D50.

They say that if you take a closeup photo of someone and put it across the room, that doesn't make it into a wide shot.  The same is true of audio, and the reality you get from recording the dogs in space like that trumps faking it every time.




Once I had a few of these, they went into immediate effect as I was cutting BGFX for various films and shows.  The texture of the dogs is really great to add a little bit of stress or drama to just about any urban or suburban environment.

Having individual dogs was nice when I could get them that way, because it allowed me to just kind of edit it in some drama in the gaps when I needed them.  They make great little punctuation marks on an outdoor scene.

They're also fun to establish and have going for a while, then pull them out to jolt the subconscious mind into noticing that they're not there anymore. 

BGFX are all about the one off elements, and neighborhood dogs are one of the more useful outdoor oneoffs you can find.  I highly encourage any sound people to record some dogs from a good distance, join The Sound Collector's Club, and share with the group!

A little podcasting

So this past Monday I had the privilege of being on The Home Recording show with John Tidey and Ryan Canestro.

Here's the link: http://www.homerecordingshow.com/2012/06/show-172-mixing-with-a-subwoofer-kickstarter-and-more/

I've had this podcast at the top of my list for a good little while now, and it was great fun to get to jump on and talk audio with those guys.  I actually catch quite a few different podcast on a regular basis, an THRS always jumps to the top of my list when a new one comes out. 

I dig this podcast because it's got a killer structure (Ryan and John read all of the reader's comments and joke around to start the show, then they do segments) and the guys are knowledgable, fun to listen to and the running inside jokes remind me of the antics that happen on my fav sports radio station (the Ticket).

The whole experience was super chilled out and fun.  John asked if I wanted to do a show, I said sure, he pinged me one day and asked if I would jump on, and away we went.  Because I've been a fan of the show for a while, it felt very comfortable just hanging out with a couple of guys that I feel like I already know and talking about whatever.

So head on over to their website, subscribe to the podcast, buy through their amazon link, etc.  This is a good show to support.

Good times. 

recording my moto: the VTX1300

My motorcycle has been sitting for too long, so I'm going to sell it.

Anytime an audio person makes the decision to sell a vehicle the first question is always "have I recorded it sufficiently?"

In my case the answer was no.  I'd recorded the bike before, but I had never really given it the full treatment, so I rolled it to work last week and set about recording it after hours but before the sun set.

This bike is a Honda VTX1300 with aftermarket Vance and Hines big shot exhaust.  Honda's VTX line has a big, beefy transmission that clunks loudly when you drop into and out of first, and the big shot exhaust really does that distinctive chopper cruiser sound well.

Outside of those two main elements I didn't see much else on the the bike that I felt as though I could record cleanly and at speed.  Tires were pretty out of the question, as was any noise that my feet made on the gear kicks.  My plan was to find the best compromise of drafting placement and proximity to the transmission/exhaust for the onboard mics.

Drafting is a huge deal anytime you want to record a vehicle going faster than about 10mph.  Drafting is the concept of placing mics within the shape and structure of a vehicle in a way that minimizes direct wind exposure when the vehicle is in motion.  No amount of wind protection will stop an 80mph direct exposure to wind, but proper placement will allow for minimal wind protection to be sufficient even at that speed. 

Motorcycles are a little trickier than cars and trucks when it comes to this because they have less surface area on which to mount things and the bodies don't divert nearly as much wind around them, so drafting options are more limited.  This bike is pretty sporty and stripped down, which limited my drafting options further.

I decided to go with the following mic placements, wrapping each mic in a few layers of a cut up T-shirt:

• Line Audio CM3 behind the shock and near the exhaust
• Line Audio CM3 behind the engine block and aimed at the transmission
• Sanken COS11 lav behind the engine, under the seat for general engine bite
• Crown PZM 6D behind the license plate and near the exhaust.

here are the placement pix and isolated tracks of a 60mph run.

 

Of all of them, I feel as though I could have walked away happy with just the combination of the PZM and the Lav (which I almost didn't put up).  Both mics capture a ton of detail, and the PZM in particular felt like the gold standard of someone behind the vehicle moving at speed with a mic aimed right at the exhaust and no wind.  That mic just had tons of low end, and got the quick transient nature of the cylinders just right.

The CM3s acted a little wooly and took on the most wind of all the mics, though they were certainly still acceptable and in the end gave me some interesting lower mid punch that the other two mics weren't picking up.

When they all came together I just about came out of my seat because I heard for the first time a representation of what it really does sound like to be piloting that bike.



Everything is there.  The transmission kicks when I'm climbing the gears,  the whine as the engine lets up, the fluffy kind of release in the exhaust, and all of the power of that bike feels like its there.  The only thing missing is the wind, which is a pretty crazy experience given how intimate I am with the sound of this thing.

Its easily one of the best recordings I've ever made, and I feel like that PZM near the exhaust is going to be my new secret weapon when it comes to the exhaust portion of vehicle recordings.  That thing took zero wind behind about 4 layers of cotton T-shirt even at 80mph on the highway over a 10 minute ride I did the same day.  It was kind of magical.

I had my intern out helping me on the shoot, and he captured a perspective that I'm less familiar with: the exterior by.  He was running a 416 in a blimp and was tracking me as I passed.  These recording also came out great:



In all I got a full compliment of sounds from the favorite moto I've ever owned in about 3 hours of recording (including setup and teardown).

Things never seem to come together this well, so its important to sit back and appreciate it when they do.  Feel free to use these recordings in whatever context you see fit.

Enjoy!

quickie M/S mic shootout

Here's a quickie mic shootout I recorded today.

I wanted to test the new ribbon mic in a setting that would naturally compliment it.  That mic likes loud bright things because it has relatively low output and a smooth darkness to it that kind of tames things that can get shrill or scratchy.  It also has low end for days.

As such I figured a good garage door impact slam would do the trick.

I've only got the one mic, so I decided to run it as the figure eight of an MS config with my trusty Line Audio CM3.  That line audio mic has a similar personality to the ribbon (lower output and a darker sound) so I figured the two of them would get along great as an MS pair.  I also had a cloudlifter in line on the ribbon for impedance matching and signal output purposes.  I pretty much don't run that mic without it.

I also wanted to test this rig out against a known quantity, so I put up the workhorse Audio Technica 4050s in an MS pattern right next to them.

The results were pretty interesting.





In many ways the results were as expected.

The 4050s were significantly brighter than the CM3/Ribbon combo, and tracked the transients more closely.  They also sounded cleaner and more clinical, which in some situations is a good thing.  With that said, they still had significant low end punch and didn't sound thin at all. 

The CM3/Ribbon combo was much darker, but the difference really was in how thick this combo made the low mids sound.  There was just tons of punch down there that was very satisfying.  This kind of rig takes EQ very well, but even when I experimented with adding some high end the predominate characteristic was that huge low mid presence.

The difference in the high end was most apparent when I opened the garage door and let the sounds of the birds and traffic from outside through.  The 4050s just opened up and revealed all of the damping that the doors were doing to the outside world.  The CM3/Ribbon combo kind of hung back and let the game come to them.

Given how these two signatures seemed to wrap around one another I figured I'd just add them together.  When overlaid against one another I got this huge thick sound that still had all of its detail and clarity.  Its a lot of mics to put up for one sound, but the end result sure seemed worth it.

Here's a spectrogram of the impacts, with the 20k line marked.

Feel free to download these sounds and use them in whatever context you see fit.  Enjoy!

building a ribbon mic part 2: listening test

One of the best pieces of advice I got after building my ribbon mic was to test it through different preamps (thanks John Sanacore).


At my house I noticed some RF buzz, which is actually typical because my house is an RF nightmare.  I decided to ping the designer, Rick Wilkinson, and ask his advice.  Rick responded almost immediately with a comprehensive and detailed troubleshooting list that was incredibly helpful.  The problem ended up being a faulty cable, but I learned that the brass grille was part of the faraday cage from the exchange.

I took the mic to work the next day and ran it through the John Hardy M1, but wasn't very impressed with the sound.  It actually had sounded louder and clearer at the house through the RF buzz.  I then plugged into a sound devices pre similar to the one I used at home and was much happier with the output.  I also began looking into getting a cloudlifter to help with impedance loading and output gain from the mic.  My research was showing that ribbons in general tend to want pretty loud sources, but I have designs on using in more delicate situations and needed get it up to par there.

I emailed Rick again, and again he was again super responsive and detailed.  here's a quick excerpt of what he said to me regarding my experiences to this point:

High end response is determined by the input impedance of the preamp.

Generally, a higher input impedance delivers better high-end response in ribbon mics.  A REALLY high impedance preamp (10k ohms or higher) like the AEA TRP, or my DIY Preamp Kit made especially for my mics (available in another month or so) will really help the top end.  

"loading" is the term for the interaction between the output impedance of a microphone and the input impedance of the preamp.  The correct description of this interaction is something like: "The microphone has to work harder, if the input impedance of the preamp is lower."  This makes sense if the microphone is overly-simplified to a current source: It takes more current to drive a low-impedance load.

A simplified version of this is:

A lower input impedance requires the mic to work harder to deliver a signal. Thus, low-energy, high frequency soundwaves do not get transferred to a low impedance preamp as efficiently as to a high-impedance preamp.

You can see this interaction in my own design, by looking at the impedance curve on the specification PDF on my website.  As the measured frequency goes past 10kHz, the impedance soars - literally off the chart - lowering the effective output of the mic in those frequencies.

That's probably why an Austin Mic through your Hardy sounds like it does... I just looked at the specs, and their Jensen input transformer is 150 Ohms. The current flowing through the ribbon is trying to keep the foil inside the gap, not allowing it to move with low-energy, high-frequency soundwaves.

Supporting that theory, the Sound Devices input shows an input impedance of 2000 ohms - 13x higher than the Hardy.  Better high-end, right?

 And of course, he was correct.  The thing that the cloudlifter provided me was a good impedance load (3000 Ohms) in addition to the extra 20db of gain.  Here's a quickie listening test of the mic through the three different configurations.  All of this audio is 100% as recorded - no gain or eq adjustments of any kind. Note that the gain settings are described in the recordings, and in the first two examples its all the way open, and in the last clip its around 12 o'clock.



So, the impedance loading clearly makes a huge difference with regards to the tonality and the output level of the mic.  IMO it's not very usable straight into the John Hardy M1 unless you're talking about very loud and bright sources, but the sound devices pre and the cloudlifter/M1 combo make the mic much more versatile.

So, given an input chain that I liked (cloudlifter/John Hardy M1) I did a few more little tests with bright, transient things and the mic performed extremely well.



To my ears the mic is certainly mellower on the top end than my usual LDC, the Audio Technica 4050, and its certainly got its own personality.  It handles transients like a dynamic, which is to say that its a little jumpy on the loud stuff and it drops off on the low level stuff more quickly than a condenser.  To me that generally means that its not going to catch as much detail on a highly transient source, and will be happier with something relatively consistent.  It's also got low end for days.

With all of that said, that little strip of aluminum leaf I bought at hobby lobby, cut, corrugated and mounted into that chassis is clearly capable of capturing frequencies well above 20k, which is impressive.  I only ran the instrument tests at 44kHz, but check out how easily it handles all of the frequencies up to the top of that 22k spectrum.

This is the spectrogram of the instrument file linked above:

And here's the zoom in on my voice slate and the tambourine.

This mic is clearly capable of capturing ultrasonic frequencies.

I'll run another test soon where I use it as the S in an MS config on some thick metal movements and see how she does.