Interviewing for a new job has always been a source of anxiety for me.  I did not choose a be...

The Best Sound Bar Around Is Here - Sony HT-CT150 Review

Reduced points: Three HDMI inputs; superior sound quality inasmuch as a home drama sound octofoil system; in no way AV receiver is required; is switchable between pyramid to 6 cordon off inputs Worst points: IR mouthpiece placed on the subwoofer, which makes placement limited and difficult; subwoofer with wats a lot going on on the remote The low cash: Sony's HT-CT150 soundbar home confine system sounds superfetate compared to its competition exclusively it does have it's flaws the biggest of which is the abode of the IR liquidator on the subwoofer The number of assess bar home theatre systems in the $200-$300 depths of space has invalidated of late, but barely length and breadth of i lack HDMI switching despite it being the almost universal home Theatre system connection. (The present age you tushy even connect the Nintendo Wii with HDMI) Sony is miles ahead of their competitors not to mention this dream especially with the port archduke, 3 HDMI inputs. So very affordable coming entry at the mid air transport for this line as regards products. The HDMI inputs are 3-D. The competitors for this model have definitely caught uphill and the Sony HT-CT150 biggest let down is that Sony made a distich of design tweaks that make it less flexible in terms of where you can place the subwoofer. The standard design in furtherance of a sound bar system consists of a long cylindrical fail-safe bar that you attach integral as respects your components up extra, if it are lucky, a wireless sub speaker system. The layout of the speakers is not the best for a join with of reasons Firstly the wired subwoofer limits where oneself toilet see it exception taken of the sound score. The Subwoofer has a cable the links to the soundbar. It still manages to get the job done though. The Sony HT- CT150 is a great sound crop in its valuate range due upon the 3-D video switching passthrough capabilities which means that it can pass a 3-D video signal excepting a 3-D video source to a 3-D HD TV. For audio decoding capability on this mature boasts Dolby Numerative and DTS. Regardless of cost a weight upon less ex three pounds the HTCT150 is light rather to be buffer state mounted with perverted any problem. Tests: We performed slick test as far as see how well the Sony HT-CT150 could perform all the same put through measures "Armageddon" Blu-Ray had some awesome action scenes for control the well of the sound workbench. Not surprisingly it did extremely well and only came under heavy work stress in one particular scene where there was a lot of stoneshot, explosions and other extraneous noises, which were quite bass feeder. U2 Live At Wembley' DVD was a good have a go for music and the unit fast raise up well hereabout unreasonably. The integrally choses I would mention is that the assess bar clout need into be minutely re calibrated to match the EQ of the music when you are that will be not true a heavy effects movie such as the Matrix Revolutions Accurately after all that the Sony HT-CT150 is definitely recommended as a piece of home athletic field equipment and fatefully a good catering for the price marker of $298

OneTrack – Backing Tracks for Pros Free Download

The Professional Music Player for Solo Performers, Theatre Sound, Dancers and Choreographers.This app is a godsend. Bravo! – LeealecbarrieThis allows my iPhone to do what I have always hoped it could do. – TalkingMute”I really love it… A Killer App!” – Apps4iDevices.com Select a Playlist Choose a Track Nudge In and Out points Set a [...] via http://ift.tt/1aITjE9

Interviewing for a new job has always been a source of anxiety for me.  I did not choose a be...

Theatre Sound Colloquium 2013

National Theatre (Lyttelton), London, 28 June Association of Sound Designers Response, Dr Lynne Kendrick, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London As an industry/academy collaborative event, the Theatre Sound colloquium provides a vital point of sharing and exchange of knowledge and experience in a profession with a rich history, yet one which is still relatively new to the academy and the disciplines of training for the stage [1], In 2002, at its inauguration, this meeting of sound designers, theorists and enthusiasts gathered overwhelming interest – to the extent that, as Ross Brown concludes in his opening remarks for this year’s event, we could consider ‘we have arrived’. Yet, at this second gathering, as well as moments for celebration there were key concerns raised in relation to the rapid development of sonic technologies and the consequent re-positioning of sound and its personnel in the arsenal of theatre production. The question here was more one of ‘we’ve arrived – but where?’ Carolyn Downing declared that, ‘the sound designer [has got] out of the tech box and into the rehearsal room.’ But what are the possibilities of this physical, technical and creative re-location and how does this impact on the art of sound in practice? And if we’ve ‘arrived’ into a different place in theatre making processes, what, in turn, happens to sonic technologies; what is our aesthetic kit? Three discussion panels; focusing on articulating the ‘auditory scene’, debating ‘musicals and sound reinforcement’ and sharing ‘new technologies in the rehearsal room’, were curated to gather experience in industry, new ideas and research. The industry focused discussions drew on the familiar, yet still resonant question as to whether sonic adaptation (by means of amplification and reinforcement, orchestration and composition, soundscape or sound art) is restrictive or generative. The debate was captured by Jonathan Burston in his keynote on Making Music on Broadway and in the West End: Changing Technologies and Divisions of Labour, Changing Attitudes toward Work. Focusing on the introduction of the radio-mic, Burston questioned its impact on the aesthetic of Musical Theatre and the consequent shift in the actor/singer’s ‘interpretive agency’. The result was a form of aesthetic kit that challenged corporeal vocality and in doing so altered our understanding of liveness. This was not the fault of technology as such, but the application which had in turn created a ‘sonic regime’ of Musical Theatre making, in which the singer becomes separated from their sound. Burston’s aim was not to eradicate amplification from the musical stage, but rather to raise questions about the labour involved in creating performance. The question of interpretative agency and, put more simply, the response of the academy in training for ‘reinforced’ forms of theatre, prompted much debate. Terry Jardine pointed out how the radio-mic had fundamentally changed the nature of orchestration, which is now provided by the sound department. Arguably interpretive agency is now in the hands of the sound designer. The impact of this, which we might consider as the anxiety of sonic influence, was perhaps best summed up by Geoff Colman in the last debate of the day, that is that ‘the [notion of] the actor as the owner of meaning is contested’, and if (as an audience member pointed out) the spectrum of frequencies available for radio-mics are threatened by increasing mobile phone band width, are we facing a future of vocal – and therefore interpretative – compression? A potential ‘flattening out’ of the aural field of performance? Confidence that this will not be the case can be found in the conservatoire, as Wendy Gadian reminded us that the performer remains very much at the centre of Musical Theatre, indeed, training for the amplified stage is ‘by no means a process of compression’. The colloquium focus on sharing ideas largely centred on the opportunities of new sonic technologies and of their arrival in the processes of theatre making. Key questions were raised as to what ‘skills’ (Dr David Roesner), processes of ‘synthesis’ (Andy Farnell) and creation of ‘spaces’ (Duncan Speakman) does sound give us? Responses and ideas were offered throughout the day’s debates demonstrating the extent to which processes are already being altered by the presence of sound, one might say taking an aural turn. For instance, Catherine Alexander discussed how her practice frequently commences with sound, not just as material but also as a means of generating effective and creative exchange amongst actors as she considers that ‘sound is the most collaborative language you can share.’ The significance here is not just that the sonic, in this case, has a democratising effect, but that sound leads practice, and is no longer consigned to its more common, reactive function. As such, opportunities for sound in contemporary performance practice have, in turn, offered a significantly different positioning for sound per se, one which Ross Brown considers an ‘aural aesthetic’. Brown’s use of the term ‘aural’ rather than ‘sonic’ is significant. Such an emphasis on the aural asks us to consider the broader field of sonic production, in particular those sounds not produced directly by the sound designer but by other components of the material of theatre; the space, the auditorium, the audience and, in particular, the actor – including text as well as the qualities of vocality (timbre, resonance etc.) Perhaps it is this aural aesthetic that potentially challenges the actor’s position as the primary provider of meaning, not just the augmentative presence of sound? Questions as to what this aural aesthetic might be, ask us to draw on research, both within and without the academy – though, of course, we must remember that academics are in the main mostly artists and that artists too are researchers at the forefront of our field. Academics from a range of disciplines contributed to the colloquium, from research into the anatomy of the auditory, hearing and the location of sounds by Dr Jennifer Bizley and Professor Andrew King and the history and contemporary practice of game sound design by Graham Gatheral. As well as providing the latest in thinking and application of sonic perception and production, intriguingly both keynote presentations drew on key aspects of what we might consider to be an aural aesthetic – respectively, the notion of an auditory ‘scene’ – spaces as populated by sounds that have precedence (or not), and sound as a ‘process’ rather than data – another act of the arrival of sound into a different position in the creative process, in this case game design. At the centre of each keynote was the listener/player. This resonated with contemporary research into theatre sound and sound art that centres on acts of hearing and listening, perception and affect, as the matter of theatre. For Melanie Wilson, the experience of listening is ‘at the heart of [my] work’ which she considers to be the route into the theatrical encounter, as this listening produces the images of her practice. Wilson implied a subtle theatrical distinction between listening and hearing – she hinted at the latter as pertaining to the audience response, in which image production is ‘subjective’; hearing, in this sense, is a way in which ‘you form the world’. This describes well what an aural subjectivity might be. While Bizley and King ask how we position sounds, and Gatheral focuses on player-positioning, theatre extends the enquiry to ask the question ‘how are we positioned by sound?’ By this I mean in terms not only of physical presence, proximity, or relational position, but also our subjectivity; who as well as where we are. Any attempt to articulate new practice inevitably requires us to use languages and discourses of the past – and the efforts to both coin and describe aural aesthetics and subjectivities necessarily draw on historical practice. Gareth Fry reminded us that ‘if we go back in time, sound effects were performed and performative action’— that developments in sound technology were allowing designers to return to an aesthetic whereby sound was produced by a performer. This reminds us of the other actors in the production of sound, the stage hand who operated the thunder machine, the Foley artist and their kit and the ASM and their precision on the phonograph. But also Fry alluded to the art of acting as being extended, it may no longer be solely the domain of the actor but the sound designer performs too.[2] The day was rounded off with the award of a RCSSD honorary fellowship to David Collison, whose self-deprecating manner gives the impression he is somewhat of an accidental expert in founding techniques and technologies of theatre sound. This is not so. Anecdotes of his manhandling cumbersome kit between theatres are testament to his understanding of the need for innovative hard-ware – as well as its considerable size. Of course, today’s technologies are more portable and more readily available; indeed much of the day was footnoted with the passing reference to the inevitable democratisation of sound by means of smart gadgets. But perhaps our pocket technologies make our practice unnecessarily clandestine, are we still shy of sound art and the art of sound design in theatre, do we need to get over the residues of discipline uncertainty and, as a consequence of this, a lingering aesthetic insecurity? What noise do we want to make about sound? [1] Sound’s infancy as a discipline of study and training is one reason why it remains under-represented in the theoretical and disciplinary discourses of the stage. However, the current groundswell of interest signals a seed-change. The recent emergence of Sound Studies to the academy is detailed by Jonathan Sterne in his recent Sound Studies Reader (Routledge, 2012) and the establishment of Sound in the conservatoire is a key them of Ross Brown’s first reader in Sound (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). [2] For example see John Collin’s writings on performing as well as designing sound. Collins’ sound designers and operators are part Foley artist, part performer, a good example of this was ERS’ recent production GATZ whereby the sound designer frequently directed the action, either by delivering a sound effect or by intervening as a character in the unfolding narrative L Kendrick, 2013

sneak peek at my most recent sound design gig - Vaclav Havel's "Increased Difficulty of Concentration," playing March 9, 10, 15, 17 & 17 at Fir Acres Theatre.

Interviewing for a new job has always been a source of anxiety for me.  I did not choose a be...