Apcreative

The world of go-kart racing demands precision, durability, and high-performance components. Traditional manufacturing methods can be expensive and time-consuming, but with a Voron 3D printer, enthusiasts and professionals alike can produce strong, lightweight, and custom parts quickly and cost-effectively. By using nylon and ABS filaments, these 3D-printed components can withstand the rigors of…

Audiobook Production

The AntiSocial Distance Hat – but what is it?

The Antisocial Distance hat is a stylish, practical top cylinder hat which, helps the concerning Gentle-Person with social distancing. It warns people if they come within 1 meter of to the wearer. It is using two sensors one at the front and one at the back to detect unwanted creatures or objects within the personal space. The hat itself made from fashionable soft to touch material. The shape of…

Building the AntiSocial Distance Machine – The Arduino code (HC-SR04, DFmini Player) and electronics

The idea is a top/ chimney pipe/ tall hat which has the mind of it’s own (akin to the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter). This hat is very conscious about social distancing (rightfully) and if you go too close it will shout at you (not quite rightfully). When the hat is shouting it’s mind blows up in anticipation, this will be visualized with a star show housed within the hat.This post will be about…

Building the AntiSocial Distance Machine – The Arduino code (HC-SR04, DFmini Player) and electronics

The idea is a top/ chimney pipe/ tall hat which has the mind of it’s own (akin to the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter). This hat is very conscious about social distancing (rightfully) and if you go too close it will shout at you (not quite rightfully). When the hat is shouting it’s mind blows up in anticipation, this will be visualized with a star show housed within the hat.This post will be about…

How to fix audio engine compatibility issues in Pro Tools under Windows 10

This is an other short post. I am working on a sound design showreel in Pro Tools and on certain day I take my laptop to uni so I can work on the projects between classses. Obviously, I am not carrying my audio interface with me, so in these instances I am using the internal audio interface. I had this issue that the the processing power of the two interfaces are different and the sound engine…

How to fix Pro-Tools scaling and display issues on Windows 10

This is avery short post about how to fix Pro-Tools scaling and display issues on Windows 10. The information can be found elsewhere, but as it literally took me 2-3 hours to find the relevant forum post, I wanted to create an extra place to find this info. The solution relates to an issue with Pro-Tools, the arrange and edit windows are displaying incorrectly with several errors. According to…

Build a fully working Retro Arcade Cabinet on a small budget

Many of us (geeky people) in a certain age group (roughly around 30-50 years old) spent considerable time (and money) at a front of some sort of arcade cabinet during the 80s/90s, some kept going even maybe after. I, for one, remember fondly for “sneaking” into terrible looking pubs during the 90s as a young teenager, just to throw some money into a usually weird arcade machine. I frankly was…

Improve life on Earth, build the MFOS Noise Toaster

Recently I have finished another (and for a while final) MFOS Ray Wilson designed noise box. This one was slightly complicated compared to the previous two (Alien Screamer and the Weird Sound Generator), but it still a relatively straightforward build if you have basic electronics knowledge. The PCB came from “Soundtronics UK” and all parts came from AliBay. Here is how the build went in…

More jargon busting in digital audio processing

How digital data converted to analogue sound  A converter circuit should be used, named DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter). In essence it is a reversed process of the conversion from analogue to digital. It translates a binary audio data signal to analogue oscillating/ alternating electrical signal, essentially continuous voltages instead of an on/off signal.  The binary code is like…

The transformation of sound between you and your computer (and back)

While living in the digital age it is easy to forget about the technology which helps every day communication on our phone, tablets and PCs. Mobile phones were already almost a basic commodity and the restrictions of the virus pandemic supercharged the number of people whom are using VOIP (voice) based applications such as Zoom, Teams, etc. In this paper, I will introduce the basic principles…

Build a microphone from scratch – my loose contact carbon microphone design soon available as a kit

I have posted about the first prototype of my carbon microphone some time ago. For those whom might have not seen it, I am re-creating a working microphone, based on the very first designs of sound transducers (or microphones for laid people), invented around the late 19th century. You can read about the principles of it’s working in my first post. My aim was to create an easily constructable…

The Cure cover track produced as part of my college work

As part of my HND level Sound Production course, we had to create a cover song from scratch. The studio work was a group effort and mixing was an induvidual affair. Our group of four has picked the “A Forrest” from The Cure and I would say shamelessly, that Mr Robert Smith should be proud, that his work is loved by a new generation of musicians (excluding me, as I am not a musician and not that…

Audio Post Production naming convention

As I am continuing my journey in audio I have got myself into the art of audio post-production, specifically into game and animation audio. In that discipline of audio, the sound designer / editor has to work with numerous sound files. Best practice tells, that treating your audio library as a database, therefore finding a specific type of sound should be much easier and faster. I am just…

A Perfectly Sad Day – a short animation Audio Post Production

A friend of mine recently made a traditional short animation by photographing every frame individually. I thought that would be a good exercise for me to practice a bit of sound design/ audio post-production. This is the second version of it (first one will never be seen…) All the sounds are from fresound.org and edited/ processed by me, except the whistling, that is recorded from scratch. All…

Make a record like it would be the 1800s – 1st prototype

The first electronic microphone was invented and patented during the second half of the 19th century. There were a few different, not the most practical solutions invented, before the loose contact carbon microphone was built by Emelie Berliner and David Edward Hughes. My idea is to re-create a working microphone in a kit form, using the technology from Berliner and Hughes. The kit would be…

Shure SM57 & its clones turn 55 and the OP makes a discovery

The legendary SM57 microphone from Shure is turning 55 years old, which is a grand age for a piece of tech item still in production. It is allegedly the most used microphone of all time and if you ever held a microphone in your hands you have a good chance that it was (or some sort of derivative of) the venerable SM57. Currently, it costs roughly in the region of about 100 GBP/USD/EUR new and in…