Jumat, 04 April 2008

Sound design

Sound design is a technical/conceptually creative field. It covers all non-compositional elements of a film, a play, a music performance or recording, computer game software or any other multimedia project. A person who practices the art of sound design is known as a Sound Designer.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes the finest or most aesthetic sound mixing or recording in film with the Academy Award for Best Sound, historically given to an English-language film. The new Tony Award for Best Sound Design is to be awarded for the best sound design in American theatre.

Sound Design can also be defined as: "The manipulation of audio elements to achieve a desired effect."

Fade

In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for lighting in theatre, in much the same way.

A recorded song may be gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or may gradually increase from silence at the beginning (fade-in). For example, the song Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve fades in from the beginning, while the songs "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf and "Hey Jude" by The Beatles both fade out. However, "Born to be Wild" fades out in a matter of seconds, whereas "Hey Jude" takes over 2 minutes to completely fade out. Fading-out can serve as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending.

The term fade is also used in multi-speaker audio systems to describe the balancing of power between front and rear channels.

Rabu, 02 April 2008

Audio Engineer

An audio engineer is someone with experience and training in the production and manipulation of sound through mechanical (analog) or digital means. As a professional title, this person is sometimes designated as a sound engineer or recording engineer instead. A person with one of these titles is commonly listed in the credits of many commercial music recordings (as well as in other productions that include sound, such as movies).

Audio engineers are generally familiar with the design, installation, and/or operation of sound recording, sound reinforcement, or sound broadcasting equipment, including large and small format consoles. In the recording studio environment, the audio engineer records, edits, manipulates, mixes, and/or masters sound by technical means in order to realize an artist's or record producer's creative vision. While usually associated with music production, an audio engineer deals with sound for a wide range of applications, including post-production for video and film, live sound reinforcement, advertising, multimedia, and broadcasting. When referring to video games, an audio engineer may also be a computer programmer.

In larger productions, an audio engineer is responsible for the technical aspects of a sound recording or other audio production, and works together with a record producer or director, although the engineer's role may also be integrated with that of the producer. In smaller productions and studios the sound engineer and producer is often one and the same person.

In typical sound reinforcement applications, audio engineers often assume the role of producer, making artistic decisions along with technical ones.

Rabu, 05 Maret 2008

Sound

Perception of sound

For humans, hearing is limited to frequencies between about 20 Hz and 20000 Hz, with the upper limit generally decreasing with age. Other species have a different range of hearing. For example, dogs can perceive vibrations higher than 20 kHz. As a signal perceived by one of the major senses, sound is used by many species for detecting danger, navigation, predation, and communication. In earth's atmospher, water, and soil virtually any physical phenomenon, such as fire, rain, wind, surf, or earthquake, produces (and is characterized by) its unique sounds. Many species, such as frogs, birds, marine and terrestrial mammals, have also developed special organs to produce sound. In some species these became highly evolved to produce song and (in humans) speech. Furthermore, humans have developed culture and technology (such as music, telephony and radio) that allows them to generate, record, transmit, and broadcast sounds.