Dominique Bassal - Sound Mastering for Electroacoustics

Intentions:

This presentation will concentrate on two issues within the audio world:

• sound exportability;
• control over sound quality

These notions will be explored within the framework of two spheres of activity: sound production and mastering.

For whom?

This presentation will be of a very practical nature. It is aimed at EA composers who also act, by necessity or by choice, as sound engineers and producers of their own pieces. There is no scientific claim: I simply wish to encourage, through my experience in audio production, a degree of awareness on audio quality. It may not be of great interest to:

• professional sound engineers, mixers and mastering engineers;
• researchers in auditory psychology, interested in repeatable, measurable and verifiable proceedures and data collection.
• composers, critics and thinkers that only consider EA from an abstract point of view.

Exportability… to where?

We will only be concerned with exporting pieces to a stereo listening situation of the “living room” type. We will not consider any of the strategies for preparing studio works for concert halls, multi-speaker or multi-channel diffusion systems, etc. Considering that a living room is a listening situation that has more in common with mixing studios than with concert halls, we will concentrate on exporting a mix “as is”, not altering it by anticipating or simulating listening conditions of a different nature…

How?

This will be an oral presentation in English, with graphics and audio examples. A questions period will follow.