Sound Effects Library
John has been recording his own effects for many years and has amassed an eclectic library of sounds that can be heard in many theatre, television and film productions all over the world. Some of his recordings are now incorporated into the Sound Ideas 6000 Series library and more will be added as the library expands.
In recent years, John has been recording almost exclusively in B-Format: a recording system that allows post processing of the results into almost any surround playback format as well as stereo and mono. Unlike many other recording systems that use multiple microphones to produce 5.1 or 7.1 recordings, a B-Format compatible microphone utilises a near-coincident array to capture a complete sound field, including height information, that can be processed after the recording has been made. The equipment and technology for this type of recording has been around for many years, largely based on the the innovative work by the late Michael Gerzon and Peter Fellget, culminating in the development of the Soundfield Microphone, currently being made and distributed by Soundfield Technologies.
John was an early proponent of this type of recording and playback system for theatre and pushed hard for a way for it to be used easily in theatre productions, but it was not until twenty five years after he wrote his initial memo to The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979 that fully portable equipment to enable remote location recordings became widely available.
John acquired one of the first portable Soundfield microphones, the ST250 and used it in stereo mode to capture many of the fine recordings that now comprise his effects collection. Then, in 1999, he visited the headquarters of Metric Halo, a small company based in up-state New York and discussions turned to a fully portable, high quality interface that could be used with a laptop computer as a multi-track location recorder. The ultimate result of this was that John was also one of the first purchasers of the Metric Halo Mobile 2882 +DSP I/O; the first, and still arguably the best, of the portable FireWire-based recording interfaces. His first recordings using the system ,of a Cessna light aircraft, produced frighteningly realistic results and formed the beginnings of a scheme to record all future effects in B-Format for eventual release in the surround format of choice. So far, John, along with the Soundfield microphone, Rycote windshield, Metric Halo interface and a variety of Apple PowerBook computers, has made recordings on remote islands, in deserted castles, at air-shows, at steam heritage centres, on-board tiny motorboats and fast sailing yachts and in many other unlikely places to enlarge and enhance his library.
Later this year, his entire audio chain will be upgraded to provide an even higher standard of surround recording to match the high-definition video standards currently coming on to the video, television and computer gaming scene.
You can find out more about B-Format and the Ambisonics replay and download some examples of John’s surround recordings by visiting http://www.ambisonics.net and
http://www.ambisonicbootlegs.net where you will find much of interest.
Oh, John also has one of the largest collection of commercial sound effects discs in private hands in the UK, numbering over seven hundred at the last count. He uses SoundMiner software to keep track of them all and can provide almost anything you want pretty much instantly and at a reasonable price. Call for details.