Audio Tour 101

Getting home late every night is both a blessing and a curse. As soon as I slide my card key into my door I fall into bed almost immediately. I'm gifted with quick sleep, but I don't make progress on any other sorts of projects.

Anywho, today I did an awesome downtown Grand Rapids adventure at an audio studio called River City Studios. I caught the 50 the rest of the way downtown after kicking butt in tae kwon do and then got picked up from the bus stop by a friend in my audio class. I wasn't expecting much from the studio just from viewing the outside but the inside was great. We toured 3 or 4 different rooms including an interesting smaller broadcasting room which was designed so that all the walls were crooked and angled so that sound never rebounded back and forth. I was blown away by the techniques sound engineers use to create certain types of feeling.
An example of this was that for most radio broadcasting advertisements (at least 50-60%) they try to record in as dead a room as possible (meaning that the sound has a fast decay time, it quickly dies with no reverb) in order to get an in your face type of sound quality. They engineer the sound this way purposefully so that when listening to advertisements you feel like the person speaking is speaking specifically to you (because with little decay time it's almost like they're shouting at you inches from your face.)
I found a lot of the other rooms interesting, especially the command booth where we got to listen to some of the jingles, ads, and music the company had produced. The company has had some big name labels through, but they seemed really modest and it seemed that they didn't want to bring up the type of musicians that they had recorded for, but ACDC was mentioned in passing. I thought it was cool the whole atmosphere of, it's not about who your recording for, it's about meeting the clients desires and making the best quality sound item you are capable of.
I totally loved the environment and I could totally do something like what this studio was doing with the rest of my life. I got to just throw myself into the business, whether audio, movies or TV and from their I know I'll find my way. Touring the studio was just another cool insight into a profession that may or may not be part of my future.

Anyway I'm back at my place, and I've had a long day, and I have more tae kwon do to look forward to tommorrow. I'm really excited about testing this Saturday, I'll try to post and tell you guys if I successfully received my purple belt.
Till then See ya