December 26, 2009 • 1:12 pm 0
Christmas night I was snowed in so I decided to wander around TU recording myself walking in the snow and other Winter noises. It was hard work with every step and a few times I walked off a curb into a snow drift and was totally swallowed up. It took a few minutes each time to crawl out.
June 2, 2009 • 7:38 pm 0
September 2, 2008 • 1:39 pm 2
elvis recording chickens
I am about to finish a movie and need lots of sounds. While visiting the farm this weekend I carried my recorder around to capture some sounds. General nature sounds, some log whacks, shotguns and chickens; chickens on the porch, chickens in the roost and chickens around the yard. You never know when you will need some chicken noises.
This was recorded with everyone’s favorite recorder the Zoom H2.
August 15, 2008 • 8:40 am 0
While doing some sound research I was reading about the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and looking at some pictures of their old equipment and watching videos of very nerdy Englishmen banging on old tea pots. This led me to
Delia Derbyshire who worked at the Radiophonic Workshop during the 60′s and 70′s. She has some amazing videos spread through the internet of her just making sounds, primarily for electronic music.
One my favorite themes is the Doctor Who theme song. A guy named Ron Grainer is listed as the composer but Delia was the one who took his song and put together the electronic arrangement that I love so much. Some more samples of Delia’s music is on her site. I recommend Moogies Bloogies. It is pretty weird.
The BBC has digitized some of her old tapes found in an attic after she had died in 2001. They are pretty interesting for their time but not up to Doctor Who theme standards. I think that is what I was really hoping for. If she only had a podcast; I could subscribe.
Original Doctor Who theme
A BBC news piece about the recreation of the theme a few seasons later
March 3, 2008 • 3:24 am 0
In the last part of 2007 I had been looking for some speakers and a subwoofer. It was pretty tough to find something that was just the right balance of cost and sound quality. Most companies after you go above the cheapest speakers try to balance cost, sound quality and high quality wood cabinets. It doesn’t really help for me. I just want it big and cheap. Here is an example of some of the speakers I was considering and maybe also these. Both of those are fine examples of speakers but still not as much performance as I would like and a little nicer looking than I would care to have.
Subwoofers are another search I have been on for a long time. In the last couple of years there has been a big growth in a more manufacturer direct model for subwoofer as well as more subwoofer only dealers instead of speaker makers who also make a subwoofer. For subwoofers I looked at Hsu Research along with Aperion and AV123 from the above speaker examples. My favorite was from SVS mainly because I wanted to have a cylindrical subwoofer. How sweet would that be? But SVS also makes good box subwoofers too.
In what I thought was the end I had decided on getting the SVS SBS-01 5.1 speaker system with that nice box sub above. It is a very nice setup, the sub is great but the speakers are a little expensive for being a little small and they are also not very efficient. Around that time, this is probably November, I found an article about some subs made for a theater. I wondered how much that would cost and saw that on the company’s site you could figure it out and it wasn’t very much for some car sized subwoofers. That lead me to their home subwoofers. I read reviews for about a month and decided they were where it is at for price performance. Also most people aren’t happy with the way they look so it was perfect.
I ordered a subwoofer, which as far as I could find reviewed higher than most of the other subs I was checking out. That then led to a couple tower speakers and a center, you get a discount if you get a package. It was all very reasonably priced but the subwoofer is made on order and they are backed up quite a bit. Last Thursday it had been 10 weeks and the towers showed up after 8 weeks. That is a pretty long time. The subwoofer is expected to ship tomorrow so it will arrive this Thursday or Friday, right at 11 weeks from order. Yowser.
In terms of a review, these speakers sound really amazing. The clarity and range of the speakers I ended up getting are really fantastic. The towers and center go lower than I would have expected for the size of each one. They are really super and I am glad I have them. I will really go into everything when the subwoofer shows up.
Elemental Designs A6 6T6 Tower Set
Filed under: loose , audio, Elemental Designs, review, speaker, subwoofer
January 22, 2008 • 3:27 am 4
If you have been in my kitchen in the past quarter of a year you have probably seen the wires and electrical components spread out on my kitchen table. Last night I decided to finish it a it took about 4 more hours of very slow soldering to finish a very fantastic amp. It is sort of an old style DIY HiFi. It uses a new type of amplifier and is super clean sounding with very high efficiency meaning small size and a low amount of heat. It also means it has loads of tiny pins to solder that are way too close to each other. I am very pleased with it and plan on building a nice box so I can take it off the towel. Also, I plan on making a much more powerful amp or maybe even a multi channel one. This entry is a little short, I think I am too excited. I will have to wait another day and fill this out.
Update: So now that I have spent some time with the amp, in its still bare board form. I am still very pleased with the easy sound of the amp. I don’t have any speakers with an efficiency high enough to really explore high end hifi like a nice pair of La Scala II’s. I will probably just build some simple Voight Pipes in my spare time and use those for my office speakers. That would be a weird adventure.
March 22, 2007 • 1:54 pm 0
Today through Merlin Mann I got really into John Vanderslice. I had already known about John Vanderslice but today was the first day that I decided to really listen to him and see what I thought. Wow. It sure was easy to get hooked. Erin said that it was like Christmas finding out about John Vanderslice. He is an independent artist and I was watching a show about productivity and how he kept everything together. I have been very productive lately and having a great time with it.
John Vanderslice was in a band called MK Ultra and after their breakup in 1999 he started doing solo stuff. He records using a completely analog recording studio in the Mission District of San Francisco and sells studio time at below market value. It is called Tiny Telephone.
I don't think I have found a new artist I really enjoyed in a long time. I have been listening to the They Might Be Giants podcast and that has helped me rediscover what I liked about them but that isn't really the same thing. I don't listen to the radio anymore and haven't in a really really long time. I checked out a few stations the other day and they were still playing the same songs that I heard a couple years ago so I figure there isn't much out there. It takes a productivity expert to get new music to me now.
Now that you know a little bit about John Vanderslice here are some songs which get older as you go down and then some videos.
Trance Material
Me and My 424
Time Travel is Lonely
This is a song that John wrote about one of my favorite movies that was too disturbing for me to ever watch again with a video using footage from the movie. This is When It Hits My Blood
Filed under: The Archives , audio, flickr, music, video, YouTube
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