Kate Gow, a Boston Conservatory at Berklee Dance student, using a Noitom motion capture system.
Yesterday I attended the inaugural Berklee XR summit, held on Feb 7th 2018 at the Berklee Media Center, here at Massachusetts Ave in Boston, part of the Stan Getz Library. The all-day event was envisaged by our estimable Berklee colleague and XR Professor Lori Landay. XR is a catch-all term (Cross Reality, or Extended Reality) and it refers to “technology-mediated experiences that combine digital and biological realities”. Augmented Reality (AR) is adding virtual objects to the real world, typically through a smartphone camera (Pokémon Go being a well-known example); Virtual Reality (VR) is creating an entire immersive world for the user to experience, usually via first-person headset technologies. VR is particularly used in games such as Doom VFR but also in non-gaming contexts, including medicine, education and law (not to mention dance).
As promised to the delegates on the day, I’ve listed below some of the urls we collected, from listening to the artists, colleagues, presentations and exhibitors. If you were there and you think I’ve missed any, please contact me here or @joebennettmusic and I’ll be glad to add to the list. [Read more…]
Bill begins with a description of his own background, and like many at ARP he traces his first inspiration back to the moment he first heard the Beatles. He tells stories about his enthusiasm for acquisitiveness in audio, having recently bought three SSL desks after using one for a particular session in an opera house (he notes that, as a Texan, he believes everything should be big). 
Abstract: While recent technological developments have led to a range of new possibilities for the recording, production, and distribution of sound recordings, equally significant changes have ensued with regard to audiences’ usages and experiences of music. These changes concern not only how we access and listen to sound recordings, but also how we make sense of them.
Abstract: “Slap back echo” was created by Sam Phillips for Elvis Presley´s early Memphis recordings. Using cepstrum and autocorrelation, we find that the tape delay used in Sun Studios was 134-137 ms, which is so long that the echo is perceived as a single, distinct echo in the time domain, and not the comb filter coloration of timbre in the frequency domain defined as Box-Klangfarbe. Such coloration would be perceived if a distinct, separate, reflection gave a comb filter with a distance between the teeth (CBTB: Comb-Between-Teeth-Bandwidth) comparable to the critical bandwidth along the basilar membrane in the cochlea. When Elvis changed to RCA Victor´s studio in Nashville, “RCA was anxious to recreate the “slapback” echo…To add them to Elvis’ vocals Chet [Atkins] and engineer Bob Farris created a pseudo “echo chamber” by setting up a speaker at one end of a long hallway and a microphone at the other end and recording the echo live”. Analysis of these recordings gives that the echo is somewhat shorter (114 ms and 82 ms), and much more diffuse, so “slap echo” was not actually recreated. The main findings is that even though the delay time of the Sun Studio “slap tape echo” is long, the echo is still perceived as rather “close”, because the echo is in mono. Panned in stereo, the feeling of being inside a small room would disappear. In addition, we analysed also a shorter delay, as for a possible reflection from the floor of the studio back to the singer´s microphone. These results are more unclear, but we found that such shorter delay would have given Box-Klangfarbe, but if this actually was a floor reflection, the measured deviation of the delay time must mean that the singer moved his head during the recordings (a highly reasonable assumption for Elvis!)
Abstract: Among the more absurd sonic concoctions to come out of the recording studio, gated reverb offers a unique aesthetic possible only through loudspeaker-mediated sound. Born in the 80s, it relied upon creative, even counterintuitive application of some of the newest signal processing technologies of the time. The genesis of gated reverb was part discovery, and part invention. Its further development was motivated by rebellion, and confusion. Peter Gabriel did it first, with “Intruder” (1980). Phil Collins made it famous, with “In the Air Tonight” (1980). But David Bowie likely inspired it all with tracks like “Sound and Vision” (1977). This paper tours the development of gated reverb, with audio illustrations showing when, how, and why. What began as a radical reshaping of timbre has evolved into a more subtle form. Gated reverb remains relevant in contemporary music production, not just for 80s pastiche, but as a tool for overcoming masking through the strategic leveraging of its unique psychoacoustic properties.
Abstract: Look Ahead is a jazz piano and bass, duo recording of performance-music, tracked, mixed and mastered at 24 bit/96khz for stereo and 5.1 playback. Esoteric microphones and pre-amps contributed tonal diversity and contrary to standard practice, the stereo mix was folded-out to 5.1, rather than folded-down to stereo. It was pre-determined that a “sympathetic openness” in the playing and sound was a desirable aesthetic, thus the “performance oriented” physical setup was a blending of the traditional Oscar Peterson and modern Keith Jarrett piano/bass set ups. These choices set forth a coherent foundation toward an intimate, immersive and dynamic performance recording. The stereo sound-field begins at the phantom center position of bass and the 5,1 mix builds outward, maintaining a natural coherence between both versions. The upright bass was recorded with a carefully centered stereo ribbon microphone, a mono hyper-cardioid condenser and a “DI”— the piano utilized two outside mics (U87’s), providing a cohesive center image that is blended into an inside-placed “ultra-wide-stereo” Calrec-Soundfield mic, limited to approximately 90% of pan-width, reserving the outer L/R edges for reflections and reverb. Multiple reverbs were mixed and panned to avoid a dead-spot between the R-RS and the L-LS. Since there are no drums this “chamber” became a featured participant of the ensemble, providing unexpected and contrasting responses to percussive attacks.