7 great podcast episodes: Spatial Audio, mixing stand-up comedy, Symphonic Ambience’s majestic modularity, Faith Abi-Haydar’s diverse career & much more:

These podcasts are all members of the Audio Podcast Alliance. → Learn more here

Have you ever been watching a stand-up comedy special and felt like you were in the room the day it was recorded? A lot of that energy relies on the sound of the crowd as they laugh and react to what the performer is doing on stage. Vinny Alfano has worked on the audio post-production on stand-up specials from Mike Birbiglia, Sarah Silverman, Iliza Shlesinger, Louis C.K, David A. Arnold and more. He talks us through how to translate that energy from the live performance to the screen by making crowd reactions immersive, and the performer crisp and clear.

Also…. Attention Sound Designers and Mic Lovers! The Field Recording Slack is currently running a MACHINE themed crowdsource library. Whether you’re just getting started or already sleep with a mic under your pillow, your sounds are needed! 

There are some serious prizes  up for grabs from Pole Position, Aftertouch Audio, Penguin Grenade, Tonsturm, Sonorous Objects, Articulated Sounds, Thomas Rex Beverly, Shaping Waves, Axl Sound, Western Tiger, JSE, Surround Sound Lab and more. Mark Mangini and Ezra Dweck will choose the winning sounds after the June 30th deadline.

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In this episode of the Immersive Audio Podcast, Oliver Kadel and Monica Bolles are joined by the advanced system specialist at d&b audiotechnik – Nick Malgieri from Asheville, US. Nick talks about the d&b audiotechnik’s biggest shows and we dive into their new spatial audio rendering system – d&b Soundscape discussing hardware and software integration.

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Today, I’m super excited to welcome Faith Abi-Haydar to the show! Faith is a freelance sound designer, mixer, foley artist, and editor with a wealth of experience. She’s worked on a massive 2000+ SFX library for Shutterstock at Vaudeville Sound in Vancouver and had her short films shown at the Brooklyn Film Festival. Not only is she proficient in Dolby Atmos mixing, but she’s also the one editing and mixing this very podcast!

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In this episode of the Soundworks Collection podcast, we discuss Director Alex Gibney’s new film, In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon. This wonderful documentary takes the viewer inside the studio while legendary songwriter, Paul Simon is making his new album Seven Psalms while looking back on his six-decade career with countless musical peaks from Sounds of Silence to Graceland.

We are joined today by Director Alex Gibney, Supervising Sound Editor & Re-recording Mixer Tony Volante, Supervising Sound Editor & Music Editor Dan Timmons and Sound Designer Bill Chesley.

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Symphonic Ambiences is an impressive MODULAR sound effects library that gives you 41 layered ambience scenes – allowing you to control each layer for maximum customization. With the sound library featuring a staggering 242 isolated layers and 15+ hours of recordings, creating it was a massive undertaking for sound designer and recordist Michael O’ Connor – and here’s the story on how he successfully made it happen.

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Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and Tom Hardy are just a few of the celebrity voice actors in the new Audible Original adaptation of “George Orwell’s 1984.” But this adaptation is unique in that it is audio-only — not unlike a radio play. In doing so, writer Joe White had to translate the novel, which was written from a third-person perspective, and put the audience completely into Winston’s POV. And the creative team needed to rely purely on audio to do all the world-building, without the advantages of visuals or an omniscient narrator. But, as it turns out, the experience came quite naturally for director Destiny Ekaragha.

“It wasn’t as different as I thought it was going to be, actually… It is pure directing, in a way. Because when you’re directing on set, you have to consider everything. The color of the curtains, the clouds, and the sky. Everything. Which is great and amazing. But here, it was just pure, one-on-one with the actor, which is my favorite part of my job. Directing actors. So I was like, wait, this is nice. I really like this. I’m not thinking about anything else. I really love that.”
—Destiny Ekaragha, Director, “George Orwell’s 1984”

You can experience “George Orwell’s 1984” on Audible in Dolby Atmos®, which fully immerses the listener into this chilling, dystopian world.

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Many of the songs we sing to our children are hundreds of years old, with their original meanings obscured by history.

In this episode, producer Leila Battison takes Dallas on a dark, surprising journey through history’s most famous nursery rhymes and lullabies, and up through the “Baby Sharks” and “Happy Songs” of today. Along the way, they share the songs they’ve made up for their own children, and explore why this music is just as important to parents as it is to kids.

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