Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1122868
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 59 about 40 feet off on the left and to the rear is a left-rear channel and about 40 feet off to the rear and on the right is a right-rear channel. So, the rear channels are uncorrelated and not imaging. They're intended to fill in the space. That basic four channel works very well. Over the last couple of years, I have been experimenting with height channels for Dolby Atmos. It's taken a while but I finally have a rig. Basically, a real heavy-duty lighting tripod and a couple of gaffer clamps that go on that holding a 12-foot boom pole. At the top, I have a T-fixture which puts two MKH 20s about eight feet apart. So, it's an all-omni system. The heavy system weighs 50 pounds with the height mics. I can't backpack that, it has to be within half a mile of the car. And then I have a light system which I can backpack. My recorder is an old Zoom H2, which is a four-channel digital recorder that's been modified by Oomagamma. They took out the internal microphones and put in two pairs of 3.5 millimeter jacks; one stereo jack for the front pair and one stereo jack for the rear pair. I'll have that in the sleeping bag with me and then run out long cables to the microphones and clip them onto bushes or tie a trick line around a tree and clip the mics to that. We call that "tree ears," using the tree as a baffle, and that makes a really nice stereo. If I don't take any spare equipment, that system weighs as little as 5½ pounds. PAUL ISAACS: Director of Product Management and Design at Sound Devices How did this product idea come to be? As we've got more into production sound multichannel mix and them an invention, and they're usually not very interested in it. The original automatic mixer, it was the 10th manufacturer that I presented it to that finally licensed it. Altec Lansing in the day. I'm still doing that now. I'm going around contacting manufacturers for licensing. When customers come to them asking for something, that's when the manufacturers get interested. So, it's the customers that really drive manufacturers. What do you like to do in your free time? After NAB, I'm going to go down to do one of my surround nature recordings at Joshua Tree National Park. That sounds wonderful. I mean, that sounds like work, but it also sounds like the kind of work that doesn't feel like work. I do nature recording in the national parks as scientific research, so it's art and science combined. I get research permits from the Park Service so I can sleep out in the place where I'm recording. And it's really a privilege and often cosmic. If you wouldn't mind, what equipment do you use to record and what microphones do you use out there, unless that's like a trade secret? I have a heavy system and a light system. The heavy system is the best and the recorder is the Sound Devices 788. It's based on four Sennheiser 8020 omni mics. I record in the evening and then I leave the mics out overnight and I record the dawn chorus in the morning. I find it much easier than trying to find my spot and set up in the dark to just camp there. Interesting things happen during the night. My protocol is to do 90 minutes in the evening going up to the end of nautical twilight, and then I stand by using a prerecord buffer during the night for anything that might happen like owls or coyotes. I've actually gotten three trees falling with many years of recording. So if a tree falls in a forest and only Dan Dugan is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I guess that answers that question! I have a technique where the front channels are an imaging stereo array, which is a Jecklin Disk in my case. It's a baffle that goes between two omni mics. They're all in the Rycote windscreens. That setup is to hopefully image an area, and then From left: Dan Dugan in a production studio set up in a dressing room, Old Globe, 1978; Dugan in a recording session, Old Globe Theatre, 1984; experimenting with the heavy system: Jecklin Disk and height mics, Upper Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park.