Office version 1.0

Commando Post house and Beat Detective (studio design part 1)

July of last year I had decided to spend more time on learning about post production for film and designing sound reinforcement for live. This came as a change and a challenge for me personally after accepting jobs to work as a sound designer for a couple films and working with Meyersound (www.Meyersound.com) in Berkley, CA. I also dedicate my research toward the design aspects of audio in theater, stadium, and high end lounge. Beside the change to a greater financial reward, it is more of a personal quest to push my limitation to different area of sound, acoustic analysis, and design.

I visited a few post house in the Los Angeles area and saw what it take to handle a motion picture sound and sound design. The cost of building such mamoth of a post studio for motion pictures is in the millions and way out of my league. On that same trip I also got to visit smaller post houses for Television production, sound design for video game, cartoons, and smaller film productions. After surveiling the technical aspects of those I had decided to build one myself.

After many grueling months schooling with Brian White (http://www.themixingbox.com/) and Scott Church (www.audiomidi.com) I made into the Digidesing Certification circle and ready to tackle this job. Some of the challenges for building this post station were that the station should able to handle Avid file also.



The other issues for this set up is that I have to be able to use it to work and exchange files with Paul Nguyen, who mostly work with Ableton Live and a huge fan of Digital Performer. Audio editing with Ian Chadworth of Sound House studio in the U.K. I took on the job last year working with Ian fixing clients recording "beat issue" using Digiserver LT (you bet we have it) to exchange files between us cross the ocean. And finally, fixing beats for Sean, designing fx's, and work with Ngoc and Bao. Not to mention Logic Pro 7 with Thien, Luna, Max, Scott, and Carol.

For the core of the system to handle all the film posting issues and ton of tracks,
-Protools HD 5 Accel PCIe with Magma expansion chasis.
-192 I/O digital option only.
-Lynx Aurora w/ HD option A/D/A
-Avid Mojo to handle all video transfer
-Protools 7.3 software
-Digidesign DV option tool kit 2
-Digidesign Music Production option
-Sony DV player, 9-pin machine control
-Digidesign Sync I/O
-Mac Quad Core w/4 gig RAM running Lacie and EZQuest Video/Audio external drives.

For me mixing audio for film is a total new area. I had always assume that it is the same as audio for music, I was wrong. To handle this issue I have to resource to Bob Katz system of K metering to calibrate between my electronics and my monitors. SIM3 (http://www.meyersound.com/products/sim/sim3/) was used to experiment with audio projection for this small of a space.
-Dorough digital meters for audio and phase check.
-Adam A7 nearfields and Dynaudio for mid.

To work with beats and music for the rest,

I have to also have Quicktime Pro upgrade, Ableton Live, DP, Logic Pro, and NI Komplete.
Hardware rack included
-Assortment of filters (Ebe&Flut, Moog, Sherman Filters, and guitar pedals)
-Mesa Boogie recording preamp, San Amps, Riviriera Amp, and Bogner.
-Kursweil KSP8 with optical option added

For synths, I stick with Ohm Force and Native instrument. It also help when Paul got a Access Virus TI to beef thing up.
The 002 surface you see in the pictures belong to Luna, he bought a laptop to the studio to transfer to file to my rig...but the laptop is now mine :o)

Combe back next time to see what I am doing to the Music version of the other "office".