Production Journal

Still quotations from the reading material.

Sauls, Sam; Stark, Craig (2013-05-02). Audio Production Worktext: Concepts, Techniques, and Equipment (Kindle Location 4135). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

"Speakers are transducers,"

The most common type of monitor speaker is a dynamic speaker. Also known as a moving coil or electromagnetic speaker, its transducing element (called a driver), produces sound by moving a flexible cone or diaphragm
Other types of loudspeakers include electrostatic loudspeakers and planar-magnetic loudspeakers.

The basic components of the typical speaker system are the woofer, tweeter, crossover, and speaker enclosure.
woofer is designed to move the large volume of air necessary to reproduce lower frequencies.
tweeter uses a lighter and smaller design;
crossover is used to divide the incoming electrical

Speaker drivers and crossover( s) are encased in a box (often called a speaker enclosure)

The two most widely used speaker enclosure designs are the acoustic suspension and bass reflex systems
acoustic suspension (also known as the sealed-box) design puts the speaker drivers and crossover( s) in a tightly sealed enclosure
the bass reflex ( also known as the vented-box) design is quite efficient and produces a strong bass sound with less power required.

Unless the monitor speakers are magnetically shielded, they must be positioned far enough away from computer screens so that they don’t distort their pictures.

a good -quality broadcast monitor will usually have a sensitivity of more than 90 db-SPL

Closed-cushion headphones, also known as circumaural headphones,

There are primarily four types of audio connectors: RCA, XLR, phone, and miniphone. With each type, the female, or receiving, connectors are called jacks and the male connectors are called plugs, but often the terms “plugs,”“jacks,” and “connectors” are used interchangeably.

The RCA connector is always a mono connector,

Production journal

Since we haven't produced anything recently, I'll just write down something I found useful or interesting from the course reading.
All quotes are from Audio Production Worktext by Sauls, S. J. and Stark, C. A..
(Sauls, Sam; Stark, Craig (2013-05-02). Audio Production Worktext: Concepts, Techniques, and Equipment (Kindle Locations 2400-2401). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.)

"Because the purpose of the microphone is to change sound energy into electrical energy, it is known as a transducer, which is a device that converts energy from one form into another."

"Microphones are usually classified by two key characteristics— the way in which they convert sound into electrical current, and their pickup pattern. "

"condenser microphone. Sometimes referred to as a capacitor microphone"

"High-impedance microphones should not be plugged into audio recorders or other equipment designed for low-impedance;"

"proximity effect. This is an exaggerated bass boost that begins as the sound source gets about 2 feet from the microphone with microphones that have a cardioid pickup pattern"

"multiple-microphone interference and can be avoided by remembering a 3-to-1 ratio. If the microphones are about 1 foot from the announcer (or sound source), they should be at least 3 feet apart from each other. This way the pickup patterns won’t overlap"

Production Journal #1

Production Journal #1, week 1 - week 2:

From class lecture:

• 44.1kHz/16bit, 44.1k the sampling rate for the recording. "Bit" is the "resolution of the sound".
• For audio, the standard sample rate is 44.1kHz, 16bit. The standard for video production is 48kHZ, 16 bit, and always stereo. Beware of this when work with both audio and video. 
• Online tone generator is handy, remember.
• Phase cancellation usually happens when multiple mics are placed together. Beware.

From the production process:

First, monitor is good to have, but you can't always trust it. When I was recording for the first time the monitor sound sounded more natural what is in the file. The recorded picked up some sounds that I didn't notice at all when I was monitoring. For example, when I was recording the "large room" part for the practicing reel. The SP5 recorder picked up the sound of a train. There was a train passing by when the I recorded the open field part of the practicing reel, but my ear didn't pick up any sound of it when I was inside the room. The NADY Sp-5 is more sensitive than I thought.