Google- First of Many/ Primeras De Muchas

Celebrating Women's History Month with Baby Lion and KBV Records

As an audio engineer, problem solving has always been a big part of what I do. For the past 12 months, keeping audio workflows seamless and efficient for my clients has been a fun challenge. We are fortunate to have such a wide variety of tools at our disposal so that we can all continue to work together.

I've previously shared information about how the Digital Arts team was able to hit the ground running at the start of lockdown, and saw our clients through some pretty worrisome times. It's over a year later, and we continue to grow with the technology and roll with the changes. I had the pleasure of sound designing and mixing this series of spots for Google via Baby Lion and KBV Records for Women's History Month.

I feel fortunate that I can not just record, sound design and mix spots remotely- but I can tackle surround sound mixes from my home studio as well. The problem with mixing surround sound jobs remotely is that the clients aren't in the room to hear the full effect. In the middle of the mix phase, the comment was made that "I wish I could hear what you're hearing in 5.1 surround!". I paused for a moment and realized that to some degree they absolutely could. Virtual mix environments are nothing new for audio workstations. They attempt to replicate the sound of being in a control room in your headphones. Mixing in headphones is never ideal, but for those who need to continue working quietly in the still of the night, this is a workaround. Using acoustic modeling and other fun technology, these programs put you at the center of any number of mix environments over a stereo feed to your headphones. It's a lot of fun, albeit not all that necessary or practical for those of us with studios to mix in. But here's where it gets fun!

"Being able to feed the clients a high quality surround sound emulation of their mix in real-time across the internet is a game changer"

One of these programs does a really decent job of replicating a surround sound mix in stereo headphones. By adding it to the main output of my system, I was able to stream the mix in stereo to the clients so they could get a sense of the spaciousness of the surround mix from the comfort of their home office! This is perhaps a better use of the software than the developer had intended. With video being shared via Zoom and audio shared via Source Element's Source Connect Now service, I was able to replicate the sound and feel of all being together in the control room.

Thanks to Tony Verderosa at KBV Records, Ramon Nunez at Baby Lion and Google for letting me handle the sound treatment of these spots- and put awesome technology to practical use.