Monday, December 13, 2010

Student Blog - Assortment of Audio

Audio Production Student, Jordan Lindgren, has been keeping a great personal blog about his experiences with recording and live sound.  He has been involved with both local music production and working as a crew member for national touring acts.  Jordan is a perfect example of the kind of talent and passion for audio production that we are proud to have here at DSU.  Here's a great video he made from a recording session earlier this year:

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Cleaning up Vinyl at the "Transfer Station"


Professor Dan Mortenson, shown above, is hard at work in the studio cleaning up some vinyl records.  Along with our control room and tracking room, we also have a transfer station that can assist in digitizing your vinyl, VHS tapes and cassettes.  We are always looking for new ways to add usefulness to the studio and benefit students and the university.  Additionally, students are given assignments that deal with learning to transfer audio and created a cleaned-up "re-master" that sounds beautifully restored in digital form.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Turning a Speaker into a Microphone

What happens when you connect an XLR cable to a speaker and plug it into a mixer or mic pre-amp?  It simply becomes a microphone!  As a fun project, we took an old speaker from a cabinet and did just that. The best use that I've heard of for this type of microphone is its use on a kick drum to capture the extended low-end.  These are sometimes referred to as a "sub-kick".  We are hoping to find a more professional way to mount the speaker, but for now we have something usable to work with.  It will be interesting to see the results when Paul tests it on a drum kit this weekend.  Here's what we made:

Sub-kick Speaker turned into a microphone
The Sub-kick mic speaker
Paul Schipper working on the sub kick
Instructor Nathan Edwards working on the sub kick