This project started in November of 2004 when Ambience Medical approached us to design an audio media playback unit which could be used in hospitals and healthcare facilities. It was to provide a simple touchscreen interface to operate and provide the user with access to surround sound ambience music programs of nature sounds to assist in helping a patient escape the confines of a sterile hospital environment. The unit consists of a computing platform with a hard drive for storage, a touchscreen display, a four channel audio power amplifier capable of driving a variety of speakers in different hospital installations, a complete power supply and adherence to the safety regulations dictated by hospital safety codes. Additional details about the unit, and the company that installs and supports it can be found on Ambience Medical’s website:

Ambience Therapy

The VAM (Versatile Audio Matrix) is a device that we designed and built to solve a recording studio routing and monitoring problem. The device itself can be thought of as an array of 32 inputs X 32 outputs, each or any of the inputs can be instantly routed to each or any of the outputs and a series of VCAs (Voltage Controlled Amplifiers) are used at the outputs to control the audio gain of the signal passing through the unit. The entire unit was designed to operate from simple MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) commands.

American Gramaphone is a studio and record company in Omaha that is owned by Chip Davis(Mannheim Steamroller). Over the years, the studio has upgraded their gear and implemented a number of installations and customizations. When the studio was first built in the early 90s, the console selected for the helm was the Euphonix CS2000. Subsequentally in the following years, Chip began to really pursue the composition of music in and specifically for surround sound format. So it became necessary to upgrade the console to handle surround sound mixing. Euphonix had a solution in the way of a piece of gear they called the Cube. It's basically a giant 48 X 48 switch matrix with VCAs on the outputs. The unit sidecars to the original tower and a slew of additional cabling was necessary to accommodate the new patchbays and signal runs for the surround speaker arrangement. Together with my collegue Ron and AG's studio engineer Dave, we spent about a month rewiring and installing all the necessary cabling to make the surround sound addition a reality. Once the upgrade was completed, there really wasn't all that much new aesthetically that anyone could see in the control room aside from the new trackball on the console, the 5.1 array of HD-1 monitors, and the additional patchbays in the machine room. Everything new was in the floors and behind the patchbays. Chip would often joke when entertaining guests, point out the Euphonix and say that's the main console and then point to the trackball and say there's our new high tech $50,000 trackball upgrade. After that upgrade, Chip went on to compose and produce a number of his albums up to this day specifically for surround.

Most recording engineers have dealt with high SPL via a nice screaming Marshall on 11. But what about recording a rocket? A REAL ROCKET. In July of 2006, I was invited by American Gramaphone to assist with a project to record the sound of the space shuttle lauching. And it wouldn't be just stereo, but instead a true surround recording of the lauch. Chip Davis, composer of Mannheim Steamroller has some good friends with some of the Space Foundation personnel and they in turn are connected with the staff of the Kennedy Space Center and and so, due to this relationship, we had some very top notch help and chaperoning once we were at KSC via Scott at the KSC-TV station. We spent a few days figuring out the logistics of accomplishing the physical recording. There are of course many rules and regulations regarding the proximity that one can be to the actual launch pad during the days prior to the launch. Of course, there really aren't too many people, staff or otherwise less that 3 miles away from the pad during the lauch. The project itself on the technical level was a little challenging as the one big question prior to setting anything up was, just how loud are we talking? What kind of mics can we use that will handle the SPL and give us the highest fidelity possible. Well, our answer came in the way of some measurement mics from Earthworks. These mics also allowed us to capture some interesting infrasonic information that can be seen in the spectrum graphs that I've got posted in the library section. If ever you have the chance to witness a launch of a rocket of this size, especially one carrying people, don't hesitate to jump at the chance to see it in person as it really is a spectacular moment to remember.

Another interesting recording project that we found ourselves involved in was an opportunity to work with tigers. A local hearing research doctor had been studying the communication patterns of tigers. He theorized that they communicated to one another in the wild with vocalizations that would be partially sub-sonic to human hearing. He had asked American Gramaphone and Chip to come out and see what kind of recording could be done to capture the sounds these majestic creatures were making. They in turn invited me out to assist with some of the technical aspects of the project. I must say, it was quite an opportunity to get up close and personal with these big cats. We had recorded a tiger that was kept out of public view due to its personality as it was a tiger that had come to the zoo from an abusive past in a circus and wasn't very happy about life in general. Anytime that someone would approach his cage, he would growl in a way that instilled an obscene sense of deathly fear in just about anyone and anything in the close proximity. I had SPL/RTA meter in my hand(attempting to hold it steady) and was measuring 130db(SPL) at times from a distance of about 5 meters from this animal when he would let out a very aggressive growl. Impressive lungs to say the least.

The ATS Ambience playback unit from above has in it several surround recordings of nature and music composed specifically for those environments by Chip. One of the ambience recordings that we tackled was the sounds of a lake in Minnesota with the wonderful distinct sounds of the loon. We set off with some ideas from the technical side of it to accomplish some things that Chip had in mind. One of the more notable experiments was the placement of microphones on the water surface. We used some tractor inner tubes with a rod running vertical and then a small windscreen and omni mic with some high fidelity Lectrosonics wireless transmitters. The result was rather interesting when we had a calm lake and any sound of a bird flying around bounced off the water and made for a really unique ambience quality in and of itself.

A local concert touring company frequently has appearances in television studios where they need to interface band sound equipment into the TV station equipment. We designed and built a custom 24 channel microphone isolation splitter to handle this task. The project demanded several multichannel snakes with multichannel connectors to quickly be able to setup and tear down the interfacing of a live band to a television studio for broadcasting purposes. The entire system is passive and self contained in its own rugged road case.

Typically, we're asked to put together a compact and portable type of snake system to accommodate bands and their equipment when playing in different clubs and venues. The following pictures show a typical portable snake design that was designed and built with multipin connectors to facilitate quick hookup and disconnect. Aside from the main feed to a house console, it also includes a parallel split which allows for anything connected to the stage snake head to feed a second position such as that for either a monitor console or a recording setup.

One of the latest audio wiring and system configuration requests we received was for a large local dance club. They anticipated having weekly musical acts and required an integrated and easy to use wiring system that would accommodate their vast collection of equipment they had purchased for the sound system. We designed and installed the wiring and interface panels necessary to hookup and route the band’s audio signals from the stage, out to the audio mixing board location and back to the booth where the amplifiers for the speakers are located. The project entailed about 200 meters of multi-channel audio wiring, a custom stage interface panel to allow the users to flexibly route audio to any number of scenarios they may encounter, and numerous terminations to various pieces of outboard equipment.

Quite often we have had requests to design and build wiring systems which require clear and easy to understand interface panels. We designed a CNC(Computer Numerical Control) machine that could accommodate the metallic panels that we need to machine for the designs in audio system installations. The unit takes our instruction from simple CAM(Computer Aided Manufacturing) software and allows us to engrave or machine any hole or design that is required into sheet metal or plastic panels.

A recording studio that we frequently work with had requested a small hand-held device that could be used to store various equipment’s standardized memories via MIDI. We designed and built the architecture and programming for a small handheld, battery operated unit which would be easy to use and robust in function to accomplish many tasks in the MIDI domain along with storing and playing back memories.

A colleague had approached me to assist with the design of a battery operated microphone preamplifier with an integrated headphone amplifier to operate a type of microphone he developed called a Para-Bowl parabolic microphone. It’s a large parabolic dish which reflects audio sound waves to a focal point above the dish which is then picked up by a microphone and electrically amplified to be fed into a set of headphones as well as drive a long length of cable for delivering the signal to the audio mixing location. The unit was designed for use at sporting events to enable sideline audio recordings of events taking place great distances away on the field of play.

As an experiment several years ago, I wanted to see if it was possible to utilize a D/A (Digital to Analog) converter as a control element in an analog closed loop to generate a truly analog sine wave and control that sine wave’s frequency from a single command from a microprocessor. The result was a relatively simple circuit implemented with a multiplying DAC, some op-amps and a handful of passive components.

A client had the necessity to perform a demonstration of some multichannel surround sound material through some custom surround sound headphones. They needed to be able to drive six channels of analog audio and be able to control the volume and have sufficient current to drive the headphones. We designed a small prototype headphone amplifier to accomplish the task. It's equipped with three TRS mini jacks for inputs and three TRS mini jacks for outputs. The volumes are controlled with stereo pots in pairs, Front L/R, Rear L/R and Center/Sub.