ST:
When we had our building designed, we included a special
room (5) that would eliminate unwanted echoes and isolate
the sound engineer from other sounds within the building.
We use a Mac computer, with the latest in hardware and
software tools.
MRH:
Explain what goes into taking a sound file from your
raw recording and turning it into a sample ready for inclusion
in a decoder.
ST:
The raw sounds of course, need to be put into the digital
format that we use for editing. There is a lot of cleanup –
regardless of how careful you are – sometimes you can’t
control sounds occurring around you during the recording
process. Most of what happens next is to make the sounds fit
with our software design. Lots of testing, lots of tweaks!
MRH:
Can you estimate the number of man-hours that goes
into a new sound set? Starting from the field recording and
going through your sound room and making the files ready for
inclusion in a Tsunami decoder.
ST:
Well this certainly varies. Obviously a trip to England or
Japan to record takes longer to collect the raw recording than
popping in down the street at the Durango & Silverton Narrow
Gauge Railroad! So there is the recording session investment
that we discussed previously: one to four man-days per loco
plus travel time.
Once we have the sound recorded, it takes several weeks to
massage the sound into the format we need and then again
into our software. So, it takes about 100 man-hours after the
sound is captured before the sound set is ready for one version
of decoder.
