Recently I made a huge over haul to the home studio, including buying a 5.1 surround sound setup, mixing boards, midi keyboards, a new DAW (Reaper), and a literal ton of music/sound design/effects plugins for both Pro Tools 12 and Reaper.
Mixing for Zagat's Foodways season 2 is in full swing, we are on break for 4th of July but we just finished the mix on episode 6 of 12. I also had the pleasure of mixing internal videos for Google, including a super top secret Google doc that I can't talk about! But should be out by the end of July (more on that soon). I also did some sound design for 2 spots for Coors Light as well as did production on shoots for IBM and Woman's Health.
Most exciting of all though is I mixed my first 360 video for REI. It took over 3 days of internet browsing, manual reading, tutorial watching, and setup (and that was just to get my new DAW Reaper to work!) to figure it out. Since I only own the non HD version of Pro Tools, my system does not support mixes in more channels the stereo (thanks avid!) so in order to master anything in 5.1 or 360 I had to download a completely new workstation and figure it out in 3 days. Enter Reaper! A fairly cheap but very powerful DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that supports 5.1, 7.1, 9.1, Atmos, and 360 mixing. Special shout out the wonderful Lithuanian sound mixer (Tomas Dabašinskas) who showed me how to set up a basic 5.1 system from scratch in Reaper via youtube! Ah, sometimes the internet isn't a dark bit of stupidity, sometimes theres some really useful information in there.
In any case, Reaper is a great program that I would highly recommend anyone grabbing if they don't have the budget for Avid and if they want to get good at Mastering and understanding that workflow. It comes especially in handy when you have to mix a 360 video! Facebook 360s Spatial Audio Workstation plugins seamlessly integrated with Reaper and made wrapping your head around mixing in three dimensions fairly intuitive. Although that particular video was relatively uncomplicated, I look forward to the future challenges 360 will through in my direction!
And finally, some really exciting news. A piece of sound art I made called "Civil Disobedince in E Minor" was selected to play at the Megapolis Sound Art Festival in Philadelphia Sep 15-17. Megapolis is the audio arm of this years Philly Fringe Festival taking place all through out the city for the entire month of September. If you want to hear it, head over to my soundcloud page! If you want to wait, join me at Megapolis where I'm sure there speakers will be nicer. I'm a sound artist now! Woohoo!
https://soundcloud.com/rph2389/civil-unrest-in-e-minor
27 inch iMac, Akai MPK mini Keyboard, Avid Artist Mixer, 3 monitors up front by Blue Sky Audio, and 2 small listening back Samson Media One 3as (temporarily placed). Not shown 2 JBLs for Left Surround and Right Surround and a monster UBL sub woofer.