Audio Awareness Programme

at

Cine club of Indore

Avinash Oak addressing the gathering

This lecture was arranged in a nice acoustically treated auditorium having seating capacity of about 150 seats. This was on 31^st January,2004, at 5pm. The three AES members, Mr. Kunte (vice chairmen), Mr. Avinash Oak (secretary) and Mr. Uday Chitre (treasurer) were Welcomed and introduced by Mr. Jain, secretary, Cine club of Indore. Mr. Kunte then gave brief introduction of AES & AES India section and handed the mike to Mr. Chitre to start the lecture. The lecture was about how Bollywood with help of Audio technology and audio recording engineers evolved cine music. The audience was non-technical.

               Mr. Chitre started by playing audio record which was recorded in 1930, telling them how it was recorded with single mike technique and asked Mr.Oak to explain how record gets printed. After Mr. Oak's explanation, Mr. Chitre then moved on by playing 1940’s film song which was recorded with single boom mike directly on to the optical film and asked Mr. Kunte to explain optical recording. He then played 1950’s film song and asked audience to identify the singer which was promptly answered, he continued by telling them that it was recorded in a studio and playback era had started.

                Every now and then by playing a song and asking audience questions to involve them in the lecture, Mr. Chitre with help of  Mr. Kunte and Mr. Oak explained them multi mike technique, mixer & mixing, dubbing, multi track recorders and recording, stereo recording, digital recording technique and digital recording formats and software.

            The last song which was played was recorded in 2001.The lecture lasted for 2 hours.

The Audience was thrilled and felt that it was an informative and entertaining program.

 Audio Awareness Programme

at

SGS Institute of Technology & Science, Indore

AES India Section had arranged an awareness programme at the above engineering college at Indore, Madhya Pradesh on 31^st January, 2004. Three of its office bearers went there – Mr. Manohar Kunte, Mr. Avinash Oak and Mr. Uday Chitre.

The Institute has a nice auditorium of capacity to seat 400. An adequate playback system was in place, thanks to the college technical staff and AES member Mr. Vishal Dixit who is from Indore and now working at Indore with “Sanskar TV Channel”.

Mr. Ajay Garg, Training & Placement Officer received the AES team and also introduced them to the students. Mr. Vishal Dixit outlined the working of AES worldwide and AES India Section in particular. Later Mr. Oak started of the proceedings with a brief introduction of the programme and it’s purpose.

Then Mr. Kunte discussed the physics of sound in brief and put many a questions to the students thereby involving them in the proceedings. Thus the characteristics of sound such as Amplitude, Frequency & Overtones as well as the perceived loudness, pitch and Timbre were explained. His discussion was interspersed with the playback of different audio clips.

Then Mr. Oak went on with the multi-track recording process of a song in a professional studio – called “Birth of a song”. This was demonstrated with a series of playbacks of specific song clip, at different stages in the record, overdub & mix. He asked the students to identify the song as and when they can. And they were very quick – as soon as they heard the very first notes of the melodic instrument in the introduction music of the song.

a view of the audience

When Mr. Oak appealed to the students, two of them came forward to sing along the track. This section concluded with the playback of the “release” version of the song. While discussing the process of recording Mr. Kunte told the students that the Audio Engineer is sort of an end user of technologies by all streams of engineering such as mechanical, electrical, civil, electronics, computer, chemical etc

Mr. Uday Chitre then continued with the release formats of audio. He told the gathering about the origin of the recording and went on thru 78RPM, LP, EP, Cassette, CD, DAT, MD, MOD etc. and showed them the samples of each. He also displayed various film formats and the optical soundtracks along the pictures.

Then was the time for the discussion about the playback systems, listening levels and effects of loud sound levels. It was impressed on the students that the listening levels are annoying to others but most importantly damaging to your own ears.

All in all it was a very educative & enjoyable programme for the students who attended in a large number – over a hundred of them.