Malta? Sounds good!
The Manoel Theatre is "warm". The Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni is "special". The Gozo Channel ferry boat Ta' Pinu is, of course, "metallic".What is this all about? Thanks to good recording equipment and computer software it is possible to "listen" to the...
The Manoel Theatre is "warm". The Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni is "special". The Gozo Channel ferry boat Ta' Pinu is, of course, "metallic".
What is this all about? Thanks to good recording equipment and computer software it is possible to "listen" to the sounds of natural locations, buildings and other man-made structures.
Audio Ease, a company specialising in audio software based in the Netherlands, has just sampled a cross-section of Maltese sounds, including the Mosta Dome, St James Cavalier, and Ninu's Cave and Xerri's Grotto in Xaghra Gozo.
"Apart from the oracle room in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, I don't believe any building was built with noisy inhabitants in mind," revealed Peter Bakker who made the recordings with the support of Daniel Talma, professional Dutch audio engineer and Apple computer expert who has been living in Gozo for the past three years.
"In general, buildings from 15th, 16th and 17th century were built to impress, which means large rooms, bare stone walls, creating long reverb tails. A dome like that of the Mosta church has a long reverb tail, caused by the elliptical shape of the dome."
Audio Ease creates software products for audio engineers and musicians. Its best known product is called Altiverb, a reverb plug-in that takes acoustic samples from halls, churches, cathedrals, or even cars and living rooms. An Altiverb user can then process audio recorded in his studio to make it sound as if it was recorded in those halls, churches, etc. It is like taking an acoustic picture of a room.
Altiverb has been around for six years now, and it comes with a library of acoustics from all the locations visited around the world.
"Imagine being on a film set; the actors speak their lines, but every once in a while a plane flies over. What then happens is that, after the shoot, the actor comes to the studio to dub in his lines again, without hindrance from the planes. Unfortunately, the studio room he has recorded in, sounds very different from the film set, so the engineer has to perform magic to mix recordings from the film set and those from the studio. If the engineer has an acoustic
sample of the film set, that step is easy: Load that sample in Altiverb, and the studio recordings of the actor will sound like they were recorded on the film set."
Technically, the recording is called an impulse response, which means that it is the reaction of the site to an infinitely short click, like when you clap in a room and then listen to the sound.
The equipment used for the recordings consists of a speaker for playing the measuring signal, and a recorder with four microphones to capture the result. Aware that some of the Maltese and Gozitan locations would not have power readily available, they chose a portable battery operated set.
This consists of a hard disk recorder, with four omni directional microphones, a speaker connected to a CD player and amplifier. After the recording, the takes from the hard disk were backed-up to an Apple Mac computer. Pictures of the location were also taken and from sets of panoramic views were constructed to enable the user look around in a room as well.
Mr Bakker shared with i-Tech his experience during the recordings. "When I first visited Malta and Gozo I was impressed with the Manoel Theatre, as it is such a prime example of the architectural design of its age. One unique acoustic feature of the Manoel Theatre is the presence of resonance chambers under the stage, which provide a low-end, warm sound.
"The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is an invaluable prehistoric site, whose acoustics are special. There is an oracle room in there that resonates frequency around the base pitch of a male voice, so a speaking man always sounds intimidating. A niche in the wall seems to be especially created to augment that effect."
Fascinating as it were, the experience including its problems.
"Mosta Dome was the most difficult to record, as it lies on a busy traffic juncture. The Manoel Theatre was planned for the afternoon of Monday, June 4, when Malta was surprised by a tropical rainstorm. The Manoel Theatre has a wooden roof, on which the noise of the rain was too clearly audible. Ronnie Gatt, the theatre manager, was so generous to allow us to postpone the recording to Tuesday, when everything went smoothly."
So what will happen to there recordings? After being processed they will be queued up for release for Audio Ease's user base. The venues visited were all given a copy of the software for their help, and will be given a panoramic movie of the rooms recorded to put up in their websites.
The website http://www.audioease.com has all the info on the company's products and on the library of locations, to which those of the Maltese sessions will be added over the next couple of months.
"It was a pleasure to come to the islands and meet a lot of people in their professional capacities. Places like the Manoel Theatre and Mosta Dome will become household names in the audio engineering world, and Malta will be a place in people's minds who would never have heard of it," concluded Mr Bakker.
What is this all about? Thanks to good recording equipment and computer software it is possible to "listen" to the sounds of natural locations, buildings and other man-made structures.
Audio Ease, a company specialising in audio software based in the Netherlands, has just sampled a cross-section of Maltese sounds, including the Mosta Dome, St James Cavalier, and Ninu's Cave and Xerri's Grotto in Xaghra Gozo.
"Apart from the oracle room in the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, I don't believe any building was built with noisy inhabitants in mind," revealed Peter Bakker who made the recordings with the support of Daniel Talma, professional Dutch audio engineer and Apple computer expert who has been living in Gozo for the past three years.
"In general, buildings from 15th, 16th and 17th century were built to impress, which means large rooms, bare stone walls, creating long reverb tails. A dome like that of the Mosta church has a long reverb tail, caused by the elliptical shape of the dome."
Audio Ease creates software products for audio engineers and musicians. Its best known product is called Altiverb, a reverb plug-in that takes acoustic samples from halls, churches, cathedrals, or even cars and living rooms. An Altiverb user can then process audio recorded in his studio to make it sound as if it was recorded in those halls, churches, etc. It is like taking an acoustic picture of a room.
Altiverb has been around for six years now, and it comes with a library of acoustics from all the locations visited around the world.
"Imagine being on a film set; the actors speak their lines, but every once in a while a plane flies over. What then happens is that, after the shoot, the actor comes to the studio to dub in his lines again, without hindrance from the planes. Unfortunately, the studio room he has recorded in, sounds very different from the film set, so the engineer has to perform magic to mix recordings from the film set and those from the studio. If the engineer has an acoustic
sample of the film set, that step is easy: Load that sample in Altiverb, and the studio recordings of the actor will sound like they were recorded on the film set."
Technically, the recording is called an impulse response, which means that it is the reaction of the site to an infinitely short click, like when you clap in a room and then listen to the sound.
The equipment used for the recordings consists of a speaker for playing the measuring signal, and a recorder with four microphones to capture the result. Aware that some of the Maltese and Gozitan locations would not have power readily available, they chose a portable battery operated set.
This consists of a hard disk recorder, with four omni directional microphones, a speaker connected to a CD player and amplifier. After the recording, the takes from the hard disk were backed-up to an Apple Mac computer. Pictures of the location were also taken and from sets of panoramic views were constructed to enable the user look around in a room as well.
Mr Bakker shared with i-Tech his experience during the recordings. "When I first visited Malta and Gozo I was impressed with the Manoel Theatre, as it is such a prime example of the architectural design of its age. One unique acoustic feature of the Manoel Theatre is the presence of resonance chambers under the stage, which provide a low-end, warm sound.
"The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum is an invaluable prehistoric site, whose acoustics are special. There is an oracle room in there that resonates frequency around the base pitch of a male voice, so a speaking man always sounds intimidating. A niche in the wall seems to be especially created to augment that effect."
Fascinating as it were, the experience including its problems.
"Mosta Dome was the most difficult to record, as it lies on a busy traffic juncture. The Manoel Theatre was planned for the afternoon of Monday, June 4, when Malta was surprised by a tropical rainstorm. The Manoel Theatre has a wooden roof, on which the noise of the rain was too clearly audible. Ronnie Gatt, the theatre manager, was so generous to allow us to postpone the recording to Tuesday, when everything went smoothly."
So what will happen to there recordings? After being processed they will be queued up for release for Audio Ease's user base. The venues visited were all given a copy of the software for their help, and will be given a panoramic movie of the rooms recorded to put up in their websites.
The website http://www.audioease.com has all the info on the company's products and on the library of locations, to which those of the Maltese sessions will be added over the next couple of months.
"It was a pleasure to come to the islands and meet a lot of people in their professional capacities. Places like the Manoel Theatre and Mosta Dome will become household names in the audio engineering world, and Malta will be a place in people's minds who would never have heard of it," concluded Mr Bakker.