SIM Seminar with Bob McCarthy

UCI Sound recently hosted Bob McCarthy on campus for a seminar about SIM, Meyer Sound's advanced loudspeaker and sound system measurement tool. The seminar lasted four days, during which McCarthy filled out heads with information, demolished untruths, and taught us how to think more logically and clearly about sound systems.  Of the three faculty/staff in the sound program, I'm the only one who hadn't yet taken this seminar, so I was excited to finally be able to fix that. Bob's presentation was detailed and specific, and while there's no way that I could have retained everything he said (there were people in the class who had taken it three or more times already), I definitely have a stronger understanding about how large systems behave.  

Each of the MFA students at UCI wrote a bit about their own experience in the class. Thanks, Bob & Meyer!

-Vinnie Olivieri 

Matt Glenn:

Two years ago when I entered the MFA program at UCI, I was a stereo or 5.1 kid. I knew nothing of system design—I was a what-comes-before-the-speakers kind of guy. Through the Meyer seminars we've hosted, I've not only grasped the core concepts of speaker system design but system design has become a strong interest of mine. Bob's seminar was an incredibly engaging perspective for me—truly, it alters the way I think about sound.

Bob's seminar presented a large amount of information (and we only covered a small percentage of his book), but what stuck with me was his constant reference to his core concept of linearity in the physics of sound. In a teach-a-man-to-fish kind of way, Bob instilled these concepts so that we could derive the answer to any system design situation. One day, maybe I'll even be quick at it like Bob... but baby steps. On top of the lecture, Bob was also gracious enough to invite us to join him at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (at Segerstrom Hall) as he demonstrated his tuning methods on the [very strange-looking] hall's sound system (see the picture above). It was pretty awesome to watch Bob work, not only to see his quick problem-solving but also to learn from his inter-personal skills when completing a difficult task.

Thank you Bob, thank you Meyer, and thank you Mike, Vinnie and BC for this awesome seminar. I know at least 6dB-intellect more than I knew before.

Josh Fehrmann:

It seems that every year around a week or two before school starts, we have some sort of training seminar.  I have found these siminars to be a wonderful way to shake off the dust from the summer. SIM class was a wonderful experience and shook the hell out of any brain dust that had accumulated. In my two years at UCI, I have had the opportunity to learn a number of tips and tricks of system design and optimization from some of the best in the business.  I am so thankful for the wonderful opportunity and life long lessons I have learned from these Meyer seminars. With SIM class, I finally felt like the puzzle pieces fit together. I am so thankful to Meyer and for Bob for sharing so much wisdom and knowledge. My art can only be made better from these opportunities.

Our four days with Bob were absolutely amazing. I loved that Bob took the time to thoroughly explain his concepts for system design and optimization. It was a great learning environment. In particular, I loved his approach to combining systems. ALWAYS REMEMBER A+B= AB  and AB = “new” A . Our class also had the brilliant opportunity to watch Bob tune a large system at the nearby Segerstrom Hall. This tuning solidified the ideas we were exploring in class. Segerstrom is quite the unique space in that it is completely asymmetrical. The physical make up of the space created some unique “real world” challenges and Bob seized the opportunity to teach us ways to deal with them. I was also reminded of how important interpersonal skills are within our business. Bob is a master at collaboration and it was great to watch him interact with everyone involved. SIM class was a wonderful experience and thanks again to Meyer, Bob, and the people of Segerstrom Hall for allowing us to have had such an amazing opportunity.

Mark Caspary:

Four days with the incredibly knowledgeable Bob McCarthy was yet another spectacular once-in-a-lifetime opportunity made possible by the collaboration of Meyer sound and UCI sound design program. Bob has the ability to take the “vudu” out of sound. Bob explained all of the strange phenomena of sound with data, numbers, ratio and math. He gave us insight into far more then what was on the analyzer screen, by explaining what the sound itself was doing.  Bob's passion and upbeat antics made the drier parts of the seminars interesting and seeing and working with the SIM software and hardware has converted me to the power and specialization that that Meyer’s SIM brings to the “system tuning a optimization” playing field.  

Brian Svoboda:

We were so thankful to have spent this time with Bob courtesy of Meyer Sound.  It's not every day that you have an opportunity to hone your skills alongside one of the top sound system tuners in the world.  Bob effectively condensed several decades of experience into a 4-day seminar that covered everything from fundamentals of system design to system optimization in completely non-ideal environments.  The latter concept was fleshed out by working with Bob in Segerstrom Hall, an architecturally challenging venue with a previously non-optimized Meyer loudspeaker installation.  Observing Bob's professional and interpersonal process surrounding this optimization was fascinating and inspiring.

I was most impressed with his ability to maneuver a sound system "blind":  The data itself tells us so much about what is happening during a tuning.  Knowing how to interpret this data will give you an edge that even sophisticated speaker modeling software cannot provide.  I was equally impressed with his line array tuning process - specifically, the maximization of equal SPL coverage relying much more on positioning and relying less on level shading.

Matt Eckstein:

To say that Bob McCarty wrote the book on sound system design and optimization would be a vast understatement (although he quite literally did write the book).  Having the opportunity to soak in even a fraction of his almost-three-decades-worth of experience was the opportunity of a lifetime, an amazing start to the 2013-2014 academic year, and a perfect way to jump right into graduate school!  We all learned a lot about tuning a sound system from Bob in the classroom, but just as valuable was the experience at Segerstrom Hall, a puzzle of a hall with some very challenging tuning obstacles.

Watching Bob sculpt an optimized system (at times from scratch) using the ratios and concepts we learned in the classroom was thrilling.  Bob relied on the data from the SIM analyzer, and what he knew the sound system should be doing, to tune the hall.  On top of the practical lessons while we were tuning the Claire Trevor Theatre and the Segerstrom Hall systems, watching Bob work with our class at UCI and the union crew at Segerstrom was also a great reminder for me about the importance of communication, teamwork, and humility.  Thanks so much to Bob, Meyer Sound, and UCI for a really inspiring start to graduate studies here at UCI!!

Kelsi Halverson:

As my first activity at UCI, Bob McCarthy's SIM Training class might have been the most intimidating I could have been a part of. My initial reaction: “WHERE AM I? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? CAN I QUIT?”

Let’s be honest: Bob is a certifiable genius. His knowledge regarding all things audio is astounding and inspiring. He answered questions in ways that would make Alex Trebek weep with happiness. His description of proper line array arrangements was one of the most memorable discussions. 

In reality, minds like Mr. McCarthy’s are rare. Coming into graduate school, I know I have a ton to learn amongst people just as smart as Bob. This class helped affirm that I made the right decision coming to UCI. I am so incredibly excited to begin my three-year adventure with this incredible group of artists, friends and support system.  

BC Keller:

This is the 3rd time I've taken the SIM class with Bob McCarthy. Each time I take it, I learn more and more. It's decades of life lessons, condensed into 4 days. It's a lot to absorb. I've been asked, "why keep taking it?"

 Two reasons. 

1) Because I'm still learning new tricks from him. 

2) I want to hear what the students are being taught, so when we run into a situation, I can say, "remember when Bob was talking about...". Reinforcing the class with real world magnifies the learning experience for our students.

This year, we had the added bonus, of a field trip to Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa! It's one thing to see Bob tune a couple of UPJ's in the seminar. It's quite another to see how he puts system after system together in a large, complex venue! At first glance, it seems immense! But watching Bob follow his basic math equation of "A+B=AB, which is now the new A. New A + B = AB, which is the newer A..." Repeat as needed. A big thank you to the folks at Segerstrom Hall for letting us in to observe!

My favorite part of the seminar this year actually happened the week after. Matt G came to me with his slightly re-vamped design for BBAJ. Clearly the lessons hit home. As we learn in the seminar, first part of tuning the system, is picking the right speakers, and putting them in the right places. That way, you aren't wasting time in the space when you actually get to tuning the room. After the SIM Seminar, Matt had a much better understanding of how speakers interact with each other. And I hope, the front fill system will be the better for it!

Thanks again to everyone at Meyer Sound Labs! For the SIM Seminar, for the R&D that went into the development of SIM, for helping to make us better Sound Professionals. Special kudos to Gavin Canaan and Tom Cavnar for all their help. Obviously, to Bob McCarthy, for sharing his knowledge with us. And to John & Helen Meyer, for having an educational branch. And thanks to our UCI folks, who help make it happen as well: Keith Bangs, Ron Cargile, Toby Weiner. And of course, our fabulous Sound Professors, Mike Hooker & Vinnie Olivieri! 

Field Trip to QSC Amplifier headquarters

Every fall, I teach a class in the graduate program called 'Trends in Modern Sound Design.' The class is primarily a rotating technical topics class, and one of the things that I try to do every year is take at least one field trip.  Today, we took a short drive into Costa Mesa to visit the QSC headquarters and factory.

Siobhan Lamb, Project Manager for Strategic Programs, met us and gave us a tour of the factory floor. This particular location builds amplifiers and loudspeakers, and Siobhan talked us through the process, precision, quality assurance, inspection, and fabrication details of the amps. We were impressed with the attention to detail that QSC puts into their amplifier lines.  After leaving the amplifier floor, we walked to the next building to visit the loudspeaker manufacturing floor, where the cabinets are built, electronics are installed, and units are tested all in two large rooms.

Siobhan then passed us off to Dale Sandberg, a Senior Project Manager, who gave us a little presentation on the functional design of amplifiers. He talked to us about the different classes of amplifiers (new information for some of us, a review for others) and the advantages/disadvantages of each of them.  Then, in a brief q-and-a session, we got him to open up about QSC's approach to audio-over-ethernet (which is quite different than what some of our other contact have been saying).  

It was a very rewarding day - big thanks go to Siobhan and Dale for putting the visit together, and for everyone at QSC who made time for us!

Josh, Mark, Kelsi, Matt G, Brian, Dale, and Matt E. at the QSC headquarters.

Melodies for The Liquid Plain

The most recent piece in my series of profiles of Sound Designers is published in this month's Stage Directions Magazine.  Check out my profile of Victoria 'Toy' DeIorio and her work on the new play The Liquid Plain at Oregon Shakespeare Festival!  (It's on page 20).

On women in male-dominated fields...

Last fall, I wrote a post for this blog about women in sound design. I talked a bit about the numbers gap between men and women, some of the root causes of the problem, and some of the ways that we try to address it at UCI.  That post got a lot of page views (over 1000, which is a huge amount for this blog), and it's led to many conversations and projects that I've been engaged in over the last year.

On a related note, the New York Times had a feature piece today about women and the Harvard Business School. HBS administrators had noticed that women entered the program with comparable test scores to their male counterparts, but once at school, fell behind academically. Also, the number of tenure and tenure-track women lagged significantly behind the men. HBS faculty decided to study and experiment to see if they could address and solve some of these issues.  They implemented a series of seminars, study methods, in-depth evaluations, quantitate studies, and other activities to measure and encourage stronger performance by women.

It's a fascinating article, full of nuance, disagreement, and marvelous stories. I highly recommend it.

Can Sound Design be taught online only?

The Designing Sound Blog posted a piece today about Edinburgh Napier University's new all-online Sound Design program. This is apparently the very first all-online Sound Design program, and it got me thinking about how successful one of these all-online programs could be.  Certainly, there are things that could be done quite easily in an all-online fashion - final projects for film & game courses, programming, technology research.

On the other hand, there are plenty of things that you can't get in an all-online program. The two biggest things for me are face-to-face relationships with your students/faculty (which, for me, is a vital part of how I teach), and the fertile environment of a design studio (where many students work in the same physical space). Neither of these things could be done in an all-online format, and I think they'd be a huge loss.

ENU, to its credit, is really aiming their new program at a very specific group of students: working professional engineers who want to move into design. The course of study involves turning those professional relationships into educational opportunities as well, and the program of study is classified as part-time.  So, if you've already got a professional career that you want to keep, this program might be of great use to you!

But, for me, I prefer teaching and working in meatspace, not cyberspace.

Shop Improvement

It's summer time, here at UCI. Now that the New Swan Theater is up and running, and our various summer rental groups are mostly done, we have a chance to make a couple improvements.  We are still waiting on the Robert Cohen Theater, to get it's finishing touches, before moving the equipment back in. In the mean time, I've made a slight improvement to the sound shop.

In the S.W.I.F.T. (Sound Workshop for Integrated Fine-arts Technology), we had a corner of the room with little drawers.

They looked like dorm room rejects. Handy, sure. But, ugly, not safe (one is leaning, others were stacked on top of each other, and would almost fall on you when opening the drawer), and not an efficient use of the space.  Using some leftover funds, and a great sale price, we have upgrade to this:

Thirty six bins, of different sizes. Far more efficient use of the space. Bins are more specific. Instead of "Firewire", we now have one bin for "Firewire 400-400", another for "Firewire 400-800", and another for "Firewire 800-800". Makes it much easier to find what you need. And, with the expansion, we also have some EMPTY bins!! Room for growth, as Apple comes up with some new connector to get into their computers, or Meyer has a widget for their speakers, or..or.. Who knows!!??!! Always nice to have room to grow.

While the shop is never perfect, we are always making improvements, in hopes of getting there. When time and budget allows, we make things better.

OK, time for me to get back to work. Need to make proper labels for all those bins.

Falling Into Design

I'm in the middle of a small series (two pieces, maybe more) of articles for Stage Directions Magazine. Each one is a profile of a different designer, and the first one is published in the July '13 edition.  You can check it out here.

And, an excerpt, to wet your whistle:

Jane Shaw has a problem. Two problems. Well, challenges, really. Shaw, a sound designer based out of New York City, is designing a new production of N. C. Hunter’s 1951 play A Picture of Autumn for The Mint Theater.  Like most productions, this one has a couple of looming question marks for both the sound designer and the production as a whole.

I bought a what...?

I just backed myself into a corner where I had to purchase a device unfathomable in modern audio and which supports a long-dead media format. Hooker bought a cassette recorder!  Yes, it's true.

Let me explain why I sunk to such noisy, fluttery depths of desperation:

I have been on a 6-year-long kick to back up my entire digital life.  I have converted and archived every file all the way back to my first Commodore-64 computer from 1982 (admittedly, the C64 files went from 5-1/2" floppy to 3.5" Mac floppy back in 1986).  Now, I have no way of opening or using those older files but they are part of my digital existence and history.  As I get older I feel the need to preserve digital "me". My entire digital existence fits on a 4TB drive...  including every massive ProTools session, mega-huge Photoshop file and pilfered internet video that has ever loaded into one of my computers.  I also transferred every one of my DAT tapes (42 of them) digitally into ProTools and those sessions are part of this mess.

This process of digital archiving made me think about preserving my analog past.  2 years ago I dusted off my open reel deck (a very well-maintained Otari MX5050-B3) as part of the UCI Critical Listening class.  I have sound designs from about 25 theatre shows on 2-track 1/4" tape.  Every one of those was also transferred into ProTools (96K, 24-bit); that involved a lot of baking tapes in a modified convection oven to reset the binder from a sticky, sheddy mess into something playable.  (I am a victim of the tape chemical crisis of the late 80's where every batch of open reel tape was shit... thank you Ampex and Agfa for not announcing your formula change).  But the baking endeavor was successful. I have digressed, sorry!

I then decided to tackle my cassette library...

I have over 200 cassette tapes, not of mix tapes and album dubs, but of music projects from teenager up to my mid 20's.  I also have recordings of 6-year old me playing the piano (and I was better at it back then) and even high school jazz band concerts. As a professional recording engineer in the late 80's and early 90's, I would take rough mixes of projects out of the studio and into my car - via cassette.  My cars were my comparison monitors and a big part of checking my mixes. If the mix sounded good in my car it was probably stellar on anything else. I am a pack-rat and kept every tape.

I learned how to do multitrack recording in high school when my parents bought me a Yamaha MT44 4-track cassette recorder for my 16th birthday (that was 1982!).  In its day, the MT44 was a killer little machine and I kept it all these years.  25 of those cassette tapes are 4-track sessions from my bedroom studio in the house where I grew up.  So... I dusted off the Yamaha, connected it into ProTools, stuck in a tape... and it played! I transferred every 4-track session into ProTools.

The Yamaha wasn't the only cassette machine in my possession.  I saved a Sony cassette machine circa 1990.  The headstack got stuck with a tape in it and I had to break it apart to get the tape out. It went into the trash last week. But the Yamaha also plays regular cassettes and I started to use it to transfer the remaining 175 tapes. About 5 tapes in, it slowly started suffer from awful flutter and was getting progressively worse.  I cleaned the heads, pinch roller and guides but nothing changed.  This meant the problem was either lubrication or bad belts.  The thought of restoring this thing made me think of the dozens of other summer projects that would have to be set aside.  I gave it a little hug and lovingly put it back in the garage.

And so began my search for a new cassette deck!

Only one company is still making decent cassette decks -- that would be the venerable Tascam/Teac corporation. Cassette decks are ridiculously expensive now and not stocked in any LA stores.  That led me to the stalwart Amazon.com.   I loathe Amazon but they have cassette decks.  I chose the Teac AD-800. It looks like a 90's vintage deck but with a CD player taking up half the front panel.  This thing was designed to dub CDs to tape.  But it has something odd on the front -- a USB port!  There is an A-D converter built into this thing. Mind f*ck is the only phrase that can describe my feelings at this point.

Nothing has changed in cassette tape technology -- or sound quality.  Same old mechanical transports, Dolby-B noise reduction that doesn't track properly, slow rewinds, and that saturated, inter-modulated, hissy, unstable and warbly analog sound. I have to admit (with some shame) that I LOVE it!  I'm about 40 tapes into my noisy past and reliving the glory of cassettes one tape at a time - and in real-time.  And I have some sticky and shedding cassette tapes that won't play - I'm thinking the Betty Crocker treatment in my convection oven might just fix them, just like those old reels.

Now I'm pondering the day when ProTools dies a long-deserved and painful death, and all those archived sessions become unplayable... or when 64-bit audio becomes the standard. What will people think when they hear I was a 24-bit junkie? Or the ghastly fact that I used ProTools.

Another odd side note: with the analog additions, my entire media life now requires more than 4TB.  Not sure if that's brag-worthy or not... but I'll let you know how big when it's all done.

-Mike Hooker

Broadway Sound Master Class 2013

Earlier this month, I attended the Broadway Sound Master Class (BSMC) thanks to a sponsorship from D&B Audio.  The speakers this year were fantastic.  There were so many big names in sound presenting; it was great to hear what they are passionate about. If you’re curious, you can read about the schedule and presenters here.

Each class also attends a Broadway show.  This year, BSMC saw Pippin directed by Diane Paulus, sound design by Jonathan Deans and Garth Helm.  After the show, Jonathan Deans answered questions about the sound design.  Mix Engineer Steve Henshaw and Music Director Charlie Alterman also answered questions about mixing the show, the music, and the pit orchestra.  One of the topics Jonathan spoke earlier in the day was about keeping true to the performers choices throughout the sound design.  He loves that every performance will be different, and wants to embrace those differences instead of containing them.  For example, he avoids turning compression on for the actors and musicians, and instead asks the Mix Engineer to make “compression” choices live on the faders.  Knowing that, I was blown away listening to the show and realizing how much intricate work Steve Henshaw was handling at any given moment.

Tony Meola had a similar view; his goal is too put as little as possible between the performer and audience.  He had talked at length about this philosophy when he was teaching a masterclass here at UC Irvine, at it makes a lot of sense to me.  Every bit of processing in the audio chain has its own soundprint or character.  I think this contributes to our ability to tell the difference between direct and reinforced sound.  The more we can make the system disappear, the more we can enhance a direct emotional connection between the performer and audience.

John Taylor has been researching binaural recordings.  He added that sound systems deprive the audience important binaural information.  Think about listening to a live orchestra; it’s possible to locate sections or soloists on the stage just by listening.  Now think about hearing that orchestra on a recording through the proscenium main speakers; it’s much harder even if you’re lucky enough to be sitting in the center.  Instead of having 50 or more sound sources, all that information has to be squished into two channels of audio.  John has been experimenting with using a binaural recording setup as a way to archive an audience’s experience.  He played us demos of a mono recording, a binaural recording, and a binaural recording synced to video.  I found the binaural video to be extremely realistic.  Binaural playback only works with headphones, and there are some calibration choices to consider, but it would be an excellent way to share the show with someone who wasn’t there.

Throughout the conference, there was scheduled downtime to either wander the vendor floor or meet other people in the room.  It was a really smart setup, and I had a wonderful time meeting people from all over.  Many people were from NY or universities, but there was also a sizable European contingency as well; I met sound designers and engineers who worked in their respective National Theaters in Norway, Sweden, and Germany.  It was fascinating to have a conversation about European vs. American theater.

Overall, I had an amazing time. There was so much to take in over two days, and it was great to be around so many other people who also love theater and sound. It’s a terrific conference, and I hope I can make it back again soon.

Constellation in After Troy

A musical number where I mixed the level of early reflections in this scene with the intensity of the music and vocals to make the scene feel like a musical.

My thesis show was After Troy, a large-scale play with musical numbers staged in UC-Irvine’s Claire Trevor Theatre.  The theatre is a 285- seat proscenium space with an unoccupied reverberation time of about 1 second.  This show presented me with many sound design challenges; primarily, a play performed in this space is very difficult to understand without vocal amplification and secondly, the show has several songs that portray madness or have a religious, sacred feeling that I wanted to heighten and enhance. Last year I used Constellation in my design for Waiting for Godot, primarily for reverberation effects, and fell in love with the flexibility of the system and the ability to have total control over the quality of the sound. For After Troy, I decided to use Constellation primarily for voice lift for the play’s dialogue but also to heighten certain moments with highly exaggerated reverberation effects.

To implement both needs, I used microphones over the stage and house and a system of speakers in the house. Steve Ellison helped me with this design and met with me to go over optimum microphone and speaker placement. He also came down to UCI to calibrate the system and help me get started. It was an invaluable learning experience to begin making Constellation cues with this system in place and the high level of understanding Steve left me with. During tech, I was able to further EQ the system to fit the show’s needs and adjust both early reflection cues and long reverberation cues to the emotional content of scenes, creating some truly beautiful moments. Overall, I created about 30 cues in CueStation that were triggered by sending MIDI commands to Matrix3 via QLab.

After Troy relied heavily on sound, with underscoring or ambience under almost the entire show and musical numbers sung by the entire cast. The director made the choice to amplify these songs using handheld microphones; he wanted this to be an obvious visual and aural convention that when you see an actor holding a microphone to their mouth that this was a musical number and that the actor’s voice was amplified. Therefore, I found myself using Constellation for three modes of operation: voice lift for dialogue, enhancing the background singers during songs using microphones, and special reverberation effects.

I think that using Constellation not only helped enhance the experience of the show for the audience but also helped the actors. In one instance, I created a cue that simulated the acoustics of a church for a poem sung in a religious style; this added a magical, holy atmosphere to the song that not only assisted the performance of the actress vocally but also emotionally as a character in the moment. I felt this was also true for songs of madness where the actors walked from the house to the stage; here I created cues with multiple reflections that made the music and vocals swim in dense reverberation throughout the space. Engulfing both the actor and the audience in this thick sound set the atmosphere for their insanity.

I found the use of Constellation to contribute greatly to the success of After Troy. The flexibility it allowed me was perfect for this show’s process where we were still adjusting staging and developing new cueing ideas during tech; I was able to provide a myriad of options in the moment that I otherwise could not have.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to have used Constellation in another show, for the support Meyer showed me, and the generous amount of time Steve spent helping me. I enjoyed the process of helping to design the system as much as I enjoyed creating the VRAS cues.

^Patricia

Groundplan of the Claire Trevor Theatre

The preshow scene of the show during the audience’s entrance which used early reflections for subtle vocal reinforcement.

The male warriors disguised as women at the top of the show – a scene using early reflections for subtle vocal reinforcement.

One of the first songs where the warriors abuse and taunt the women of Troy – a scene where I mixed the level of early reflections to balance with the reinforced vocals of the song.

The one to be sacrificed to the gods is chosen – a scene using early reflections for subtle vocal reinforcement.

Hecuba performs a burial ritual for her children – a scene with a long reverberation effect to match the spiritual music and atmosphere.