Hot Mustang Breakdown Cartoon

Revised a previous vector design into this cartoon depicting a car breakdown. The design was originally a limited colour vector image, but we add a few graduations, colours, a cartoon road and leak in Photoshop.

Hans Zimmer Interview

Hans Zimmer Interview April 2011 is filled with interesting comments. Only the first 30seconds are not English of part 1. Parts 2 to 4 are just English.

There is a very interesting comment made on his monitoring environment. He doesn't use a sub woofer as it must come across well without one, but loves surround sound. From the recent SOS magazine studio rescue he also explained that he doesn't use a center speaker. Adding that channel is for the mastering and sound stage mixers.

When doing our own mixes, we are most concerned on how it comes across on normal systems. On ear buds, in the car and on small PC speakers. I think it is just another indication that the world of hi-fi is long gone....

But it is at 2:30 in Part 4 that I really like..

"It did have a quality about it, and I don't think it was just luck, you know.

People are talking about the sonic quality of a series III Fairlight while forgetting the output stage of that thing was the same filter , and I "think" the same VCA , as was in a Jupiter 8 or Prophet 5. I mean they ran through those, you know what ever... SSM chips and that was the filter on that thing, ..um… so there wasn't a reason really it should sound THAT much better than something else as everything else was using the same stuff , but I think there was a design aesthetic, and it is the guys building it.

I think the people that built our instruments, I see them as much as artists as I see them as scientists."

.. as I was the guy that designed the audio producing sections of the Fairlight CMI III.

Digital 7 TV Reception Issue and Fix

Recently had an issue with poor Digital 7 (and 7mate and 7TWO) reception, and this post is about what the problem and solution was.

We live in an area in Sydney Australia with very good TV reception. Only need a cheap internal antenna, on the top of a piece of furniture. Very classy. The signal strength shown by the set top box is 100%, except the 7 channels which were 85~90%.

A few months ago we started getting drop outs and image friezes on any 7 channel when it rained, but signal strength was still showing good. Now Digital 44 TVS always has good reception and always indicates less signal, closer to 60%. So what was going on?

On investigation and looking back at when the problem showed up, I came to realize it started to happen after putting an Ethernet switch and some cables near the same piece of furniture. It didn't rain till days or weeks later, so the correlation wasn't obvious, as the reception hadn't changed at the time of install.

The switch was leaning against the antenna cable going to the set top box. The solution was to move the switch all of 20cm away to behind the furniture and not have the antenna cable run along the Ethernet cables.

Also used some CO CONTACT CLEANER on the telescoping rabbit ears joints, but that wasn't the fix. It has now been perfect for 3 weeks, and we have had some almighty storms that caused no problem at all to reception.

It even though the TV signal strength was high, when the antenna was near the switch, that interfered with the received digital signal, causing the error rate to go above that which was recoverable by the set top box.

Music Video Cartoon Funny Car Rock

A 2:34 minute instrumental rock music video using drag racing sound effects from a Nostalgic Funny Car meet. It is at a slow 120BPM but does have a double time feel verse, and a heavy guitar sound.

It has a Black Sabbath or Metallica approach to composition, with several different riffs butted together. It has several one bar sections as transitions between verses as well..... and of course the 3000+BHP engine sounds are not your usual song ingredient, so it doesn't conform to a typical song structure.

The video itself looks like end credits. Blue tinged cartoon drag car illustrations fade in and out and have scrolling text over them. They aren't credits though, but bits of info and comments about the car, drag racing, the crew, the sound effects and music production. Mostly tongue in cheek.

The music was recorded and produced in the DAW Reaper with real guitar and bass, ezdrummer for the drums and Mastered using Ozone 5.

Designing Bumper Stickers

A typical bumper sticker is 11" x 3". Generally you want the person in the car behind, while driving or waiting at the traffic lights to read what you want to say.

The simple way to do that is use a simple big text message.

That may be OK for "Save The Whales", or "I love any shit Apple makes!" but is that all you really want to show and say?

The images here shows 2 of 8 options we were working with recently. If you just want to show the URL and a message of what that business does, then the top one may be fine. It will be easy to read from a distance and get a message across, but would it get someone to actually visit the site and look at the style of graphics samples?

Now the bottom image is more complicated, not so easy to read, but also has some visual samples and the URL. Would it get a second look? Would it possibly get someone to actually remember and look up the URL when they get home or to the office?

We have used the very affordable zazzle to make this bumper sticker to try out.

We don't have hard facts to support that one is better than the other, other than a bigger sign than a bumper sticker is better for business advertising on a car!